The Energy Information Agency, an office of the federal Department of Energy, indicates West Virginia coal production is up 20 percent over the same period last year.
Though the state could be on target to produce 100 million tons in a year, it’s not close to the 170 million tons produced in 2008, and former coal miners and their families continue to work on living in West Virginia with the current coal industry.
On Jan. 28, Tom Hansell of Appalachian State University will discuss “After Coal: Stories of Survival in Appalachia and Wales” at WVU’s College of Law.
The event, co-sponsored with the WVU Humanities Center, the Appalachian Justice Initiative, WVU’s Reed College of Media and WVU Press, will be from 4-5:30 p.m.
Hansell will be joined by panelists Caity Coyne, of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and Nicholas Stump, of WVU’s College of Law.
Ashton Marra, of Reed College of Media, will moderate this conversation about how communities and cultures survive after coal.
Hansell is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been broadcast on public television and screened at international film festivals, according to a press release from WVU Press. He has more than two decades of experience working with coalfield residents to create collaborative media projects. He began his career at the Appalshop media arts center, and he currently teaches at Appalachian State University.
Central Appalachia and south Wales were built to extract coal, and faced with coal’s decline, both regions experienced economic depression, labor unrest and out-migration, according to the press release.
After Coal focuses on coalfield residents who chose not to leave, but instead remained in their communities and worked to build a diverse and sustainable economy. It tells the story of four decades of exchange between two mining communities on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and profiles individuals and organizations that are undertaking the critical work of regeneration, the release reads.
The stories are told through interviews and photographs collected during the making of After Coal, a documentary film produced by the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University and directed by Hansell.
