What did you think of this episode?

In this episode, we're looking for voice in some WWII-era letters and recipe books from my great-grandparents' era (I found a recipe called "Masculine Potato Salad"!) You'll also hear a voiceplace story from a western NC listener, who has decided to return to his voiceplace to teach his young daughter about her linguistic heritage. Then, we'll talk about the phrases "up and" and "up in," as in "She up and slapped me for no good reason!" or "We've had up in 50 people at a time come to the house on holidays."

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Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

Beth Macy is the bestselling author of Dopesick, Factory Man, and Paper Girl. Dopesick, her investigation of the opioid crisis, was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal, won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, and was described as a “masterwork of narrative nonfiction” by The New York Times. Dopesick was made into a Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning Hulu series on which Macy served as an executive producer and cowriter. Her most recent book, Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, is a combination memoir and reported analysis of the rural-urban divide told through the lenses of backward mobility, political polarization, and the decimation of local news.

Silas House is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the novels Clay’s Quilt, 2001; A Parchment of Leaves, 2003; The Coal Tattoo, 2005; Eli the Good, 2009; Same Sun Here (co-authored with Neela Vaswani) 2012, Southernmost, 2018, and Lark Ascending, 2022, as well as a book of creative nonfiction Something’s Rising, co-authored with Jason Howard, 2009; and four plays. His first book of poetry, All These Ghosts, was the recipient of the 2026 Southern Book Prize. He recently published his first murder-mystery (under the pseudonym S.D. House), Dead Man Blues. He was also Poet Laureate of Kentucky.

I sat down with these two amazing writers at the 50th John Fox, Jr. Literary Festival at Mountain Empire Community College to talk about writing, their process, and a what it means to chronicle the complex stories of this region.

Special thanks to MECC's Dr. Amy Greear, Brandon Maggard for audio, and MECC for allowing me to create this episode from our conversation.

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: talkingappalachianpodcast@gmail.com or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

Dr. Jennifer Cramer, Director of the Appalachian Studies Center at the University of Kentucky, joins me for a conversation about how she became a linguist (shifting from math to French and linguistics), her graduate training at Purdue and the University of Illinois-Urbana, and how Kentucky’s “in-betweenness” shaped her interest in Southern and Appalachian identities. She explains the Linguistic Atlas Project, a nearly century-long archive of U.S. dialect interviews now housed at the University of Kentucky and edited by Allison Burkette, and how it supports ongoing transcription, digitization, and new data collection. Kramer outlines perceptual dialectology methods (mental map tasks, labeling, and ratings) to study how non-linguists perceive dialect regions and attach attitudes and stereotypes that can affect discrimination. She argues that “dying dialect” claims are complicated, notes public reactions to reporting on Southern English change, and emphasizes accent pride, urging listeners not to judge people based on how they talk.

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: talkingappalachianpodcast@gmail.com or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain