Browse Items (117 total)

Largely overshadowed by the presence of John Powell and later Richard Chase, Annabel Morris Buchanan was the animating spirit of the White Top Folk Festival.
"Nationwide publicity about the White Top Folk Festival in newspapers and magazines helped…

What is Appalachian fiction? What makes it unique?
Wendell Berry throws out some suggestions in his short piece, The Long Legged House:

“As I worked that summer I had these lines of [Andrew] Marvell very fresh in my mind, and they were having a…

Appalachian Homecoming was conceived as a series of programs all taking place at the Washington County (Va.) Public Library highlighting positive aspects of Appalachian life and culture. While planning the program we talked to people like Randy…

Abingdon is no stranger to poets and poetry. Longtime Abingdon resident Lou Crabtree, won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for poetry and was named Virginia Laureate in Literature.

The Sow's Ear Press began operation in Abingdon in 1987. Sow's Ear (since…

Lee Smith and Lou Crabtree met in 1980 at a literary event in Abingdon during the Virginia Highlands Festival, a meeting which was humorously detailed in Lee Smith's reflection on her writing life, Dimestore. It was a portentuous meeting, as they…

"About the time the war ended children in this section were attending the old Laurel school, just started in a one room log house that stood where the Kestner house is built west of the Lincoln plant. This school was also a subscription school."

Saltville native Robert Porterfield was an out-of-work actor in New York City when he decided to return to southwestern "Virginia in 1932. He brought with him twenty-two other unemployed actors, and together they founded Barter Theatre, allowing…

Folklorist and musician Lamar Bascom Lunsford (1888-1973) was the creative force behind The Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. Started in 1927 as the the "Rhododendron Festival" it is thought to be the first "Folk Festival."

"The first factory to be established in Damascus aside from the lumber industries was the Beaver Chemical Company. The plant received its charter on January 19, 1919, with a capital stock of $50,000, and proceeded to manufacture dyes."