For nearly a century, the Kentucky Mountain Laurel Festival has staged a formal dance. Organizers rely on a manual that’s been passed down for generations.

Also, abortion is illegal in most cases in Tennessee. So, what happens after a birth? A photographer followed one mother for a year. 

And, new prisons are touted as a way to bring jobs to former coal communities. Not everybody agrees the trade-off is worth it.

You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.

In This Episode:

The Kentucky Mountain Laurel Festival is the oldest festival in the state of Kentucky, and it happens Memorial Day weekend. 

It’s a four-day celebration culminating in “The Grand March,” a traditional dance that has been passed down since the first festival in 1931.

Folkways Reporter Will Warren, a Pineville native, went to the festival over Memorial Day weekend in 2023 and brought us the story.

Residents of Wyoming County, West Virginia, say their drinking water is making people sick. But it’s unclear exactly why — and who’s responsible for fixing the problem.

State regulators say water from a nearby mining complex is flowing into the creek, but who owns the mine and who is responsible for cleaning up the toxic water?

WVPB’s Briana Heaney reports.

Tennessee photographer Stacy Kranitz acknowledges the complicated history of people taking pictures of poor Appalachians, often focusing on the harsher, ugly elements that reinforce stereotypes. She actively wrestles with it in her work. 

Host Mason Adams spoke with Kranitz about her work documenting the lives of a young family last year called “The Year After a Denied Abortion.” 

Central Appalachia is home to 16 federal and state prisons. And building the prisons in that region was based partly on the idea of replacing lost jobs in coal country. Some of them were even built on the site of former surface mines. 

Now, federal officials are considering adding a new prison in Letcher County, Kentucky. The area’s U.S. Representative, Hal Rogers, firmly supports the project.

But as the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting’s Jared Bennett tells us, the project is also drawing opposition, both from locals and from activists around the country.

For incarcerated people, books can provide crucial information to navigate the justice system, educate themselves and develop plans to reenter society. But people in prison have limited access to books. The Appalachian Prison Book Project is trying to change that.

WVPB’s Jack Walker reports.

In her new book Burn, Marshall University professor and poet Sara Henning draws on her complicated family history and rough upbringing to explore young love, loss and the weight of grief.

Producer Bill Lynch spoke with her.

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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Hello June, John Inghram, Jeff Ellis, Erik Vincent Huey and John Blissard.

Bill Lynch is our producer. Abby Neff is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.

You can send us an email: [email protected].

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Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.