“Regularly, Appalachia is imagined to need a funeral, to be already gone, to cry out for remembrance.”

When the editors of Southern Cultures asked me to guest edit a special issue on Appalachia, I said yes immediately. Not only is western North Carolina my family home, but Appalachian Studies is my most long-standing scholarly home. Literature, music, food, art, entrepreneurship, and scholarship from and about Appalachia are energetic, diverse, robust, and prolific right now—and they have long been so. I am thrilled and honored to have helped create this issue you hold in your hands.