The outside world peddles lazy labels for Appalachia. You know better.
I write essays about what it actually means to come from here. Mamaw’s garden beans and deer-sausage chest freezers. Mountain professors and Wal-Mart wanderers. The whole complicated truth of a place most people flatten into a stereotype.
Appalachia is a word people fight over. I hail from somewhere in the upper middle — my ancestors come from the coal-country hill towns on the Eastern Kentucky–West Virginia border.
I write from that switchback pull. Never fully inside, never fully out. (set as a blockquote)
Free — Essays one to two times a month. The stories that make you see Appalachia, and yourself, differently.
Paid · $6/month — Your seat at the kitchen table. The essays about family, faith, class — the things that are harder to say out loud.
“You are like a performing artist sharing your whole world.” — Lynn K. “In a world full of insults and anger, your writing leaves me with wonder.” — Denyse A. “I have roots in Appalachia that need to be watered occasionally.” — Tim S.
I also write The Ruins Project — an abandoned coal mine transformed into a mosaic museum in the woods. Hundreds of stories, hundreds of artists, thousands of mosaics. (link “The Ruins Project” to rachelsager.substack.com)
Feel the switchback tug? Pull out your chair, take a seat at the kitchen table.
