About once a year, usually when I see the web hosting charge hit our bank account, I remember that I have a website, and that I used to write a whole lot. I still write a whole lot - just not things I publish on the internet. Trust me, no one wants to read the policies I write, the memos I compose, the compliance narratives I draft, or the myriad other functionary forms of writing I crank out. Over the last ten years, my career has changed dramatically. When I first started w

Author's Note: I wrote this essay a long time ago. A lot of people have read it since I wrote it. At least two million on my website alone. The essay has taken on a life of its own, re-posted and shared and otherwise plastered all over the interwebs. Versions of it are assigned reading in more classes than I can keep track of, and I still sometimes get invitations to speak from folks who find this essay. I usually don't accept those invitations anymore, though, because I have

Appalachia is a place. It is defined on maps, even when competing mapmakers disagree about its boundaries. It is also a culture, even though that culture is not uniform in nature across the region. For generations, America's most talented writers have understood the power and importance of place in the human psyche. Imagine Faulkner's work set in the midwest, or Steinbeck's work set in New England. It just doesn't work. Place matters in the telling of any decent story. In Ap