Appalachian Literary Arts & Storytelling Festival

Throughout the summer of 2024, we sent out a call for responses to photographs from Roger May's Looking at Appalachia - Call & Response project. We narrowed down the responses to TEN impressive stories, poems, and ruminations about the Appalachian experience. 

To honor Roger May's participation as a keynote speaker for the first annual ALAS Festival, local school districts were tasked with creating a photography exhibit showing what students view as "their Appalachia" as a callback to May's own crowdsourced project. Students had to write a short paragraph to explain their intent with the image and the teacher leader also wrote a paragraph to explain the cohesiveness of the exhibit they put together from their pool of student photos.

In the early winter of 2024, we invited you to tell us the stories your holiday recipes carry. These four pieces (two stories, two poems) connect us, remind us, show us, and inspire us… through the foods they choose to serve their families and friends during the holidays. May they do the same for you through this season.​