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Latest Stories

Speak Storytelling Announces 2023 Season

Historic Designation For Fairview Cemetery

Public Hearing On Local Water System  — Feb 6

Jefferson County Seeks Public Comment For Comprehensive Plan Update

County Commission Begins 2023 With Many Disagreements

Jefferson County Selects Comcast For GigReady Program

Watching The West Virginia Legislature

Preventing Bird Window Strikes

Banking On The Community

Changes & Choices In 2023

John Nissel Resigns As Jefferson County Administrator

Jefferson Security Bank Spreads Joy With Holiday Bears

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In Print

Chris McGinley

Appalachian Noir – ‘Coal Black,’ by Chris McGinley (Shotgun Honey, 2019)

March, 2020 Tagged With: Appalachia, Appalachian noir, book review, Chris McGinley

Coal Black

In one of the most searing dialogues of Chris McGinley’s debut short story collection Coal Black, an eastern Kentucky drug dealer known as Hellbender asks a sheriff who’s been pursuing him: “Why do you think people around here are so addicted to drugs?” He answers his own question: “It’s because of depression. There is a streak of fatalism in Coal Black that is not just informed by the trappings of the crime fiction genre, but by the socioeconomic devastation of its rural Kentucky setting. The survivalist outlook of the characters in these stories is its inevitable consequence. Read the Full Story >>

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