Dec 12
By Niki King
Say the word “Appalachian” and many images come to mind. A city skyline may not be among them. And maybe that’s our own fault. Our cities haven’t been a hot topic in the Appalachian Studies community and there are few representations of our regional urbanity in art, media and literature.
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by Beth Newberry
It’s 1982.
I am five years old.
I stand with my dad and a neighbor, both their faces beyond my sight line, their words floating down in the barely-cool air of dusk. My dad tells our neighbor that we are going soon on a trip to Virginia to visit family. My father describes the small, mountain towns he and my mother are from, and the neighbor looks at me and says, “Oh, but you’re a city girl.” Read more
By Beth Newberry
Appalachians living beyond the hills and who are trying to return to the region often search for a new hometown that combines the best of “back home” and the cities they are leaving behind. For many returning Appalachians, the search often includes finding a new city or town that has urban amenities, as well as close proximity to family (but not too close), the visual beauty of the Appalachia, and close-connectedness of the culture and job opportunities. An impossible combination? Maybe not as unimaginable as many ex-Apps or outsiders might think. Read more
by Niki King
Look up “urban Appalachian” and you’re sure to find the Urban Appalachian Council, which has worked since 1974 to “promote a decent quality of life for Appalachian people of Greater Cincinnati” through direct services and advocacy. They’ve also created an astounding body of research, that taken together, traces the experience of Appalachians in Cincinnati and other Mid-western cities over the last 40 years. This fall, The HillVille caught up with Phil Obermiller, a longstanding member of the Council’s Research Committee who has written extensively on the subject, to find out what’s new. Read more
By L.S. McKee
On many levels, Kingsport, Tennessee is home. I grew up here, my parents were born down the road in Bristol, and generations before lived in the hills of Southwest Virginia. On other levels—the willful, self-inscribed ones—it isn’t. I’ve always bragged on its beauty, its music, its people, and in the same breath swore it was a place where I would never live again. What it could give, I assumed, had already been given. Read more
By Niki King
That’s right, friends and dear readers, it’s less than a week away. We are in a state of frenzy putting the final pieces together for our first edition launch. Read more
Niki King and Beth Newberry are excited to soon launch The HillVille, a weekly online magazine for urban Appalachians.
And just who are urban Appalachians, anyway? Good question. We’re a diverse bunch. We are exapps, folks who grew up in the region, but moved away for school, work or whatever. Some of us are second- or third-generation exapps, born to Appalachians, but raised in cities outside the region. Others live in one of the many cities and towns actually in the mountains, like Knoxville, Tenn., and Charleston, W.Va. or cities on the edges—to the north (holla Pittsburgh), to the South (bring it Birmingham) and the mid-west (isn’t that right, Cincinnati?). Read more
The HillVille 