Mason Adams

3 days ago | wvpublic.org | Mason Adams

This conversation originally aired in the June 22, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia. People in rural areas across the U.S. are struggling to access the health care they need. Rural hospitals are closing at alarming rates, and some that remain open offer limited services. In Asheville, North Carolina, Mission Hospital serves the metro area and its surrounding rural counties. But in recent years, the hospital has been scrutinized, and even federally investigated, for a range of problems.

3 days ago | buff.ly | Mason Adams

This conversation originally aired in the June 22, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia. People in rural areas across the U.S. are struggling to access the health care they need. Rural hospitals are closing at alarming rates, and some that remain open offer limited services. In Asheville, North Carolina, Mission Hospital serves the metro area and its surrounding rural counties. But in recent years, the hospital has been scrutinized, and even federally investigated, for a range of problems.

1 month ago | wvpublic.org | Mason Adams

This conversation originally aired in the May 25, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia. The book, titled This Book is Free and Yours to Keep, won the 2024 Weatherford Award for nonfiction. It consists largely of letters from incarcerated people across the region who have participated with the Appalachian Prison Book Project. Ellen Skirvin is one of the book’s editors and spoke with Inside Appalachia host Mason Adams about the Appalachian Prison Book Project — and how it became a book itself.

1 month ago | wvpublic.org | Mason Adams

This conversation originally aired in the May 18, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia. In the years of Reconstruction following the American Civil War, a group of formerly enslaved people purchased land and formed a Black communal society in western North Carolina. “The Kingdom of the Happy Land” was founded in the summer of 1873 by freed people escaping violence in South Carolina. A new novel tells a story set in the kingdom, but in the past and in the present day. It’s titled, Happy Land.

1 month ago | wvpublic.org | Mason Adams

This conversation originally aired on the May 4, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia. Inmates and their families are complaining about poor conditions and treatment at a supermax prison in Appalachian Virginia. In Virginia, two high-security, supermax prisons are located in coal country: Wallens Ridge State Prison, near Big Stone Gap, and Red Onion, near the town of Pound.