Went the the Virginia Festival of the Book session Digging Coal and Moving Mountains at Gravity Lounge, moderated by David Bearinger. The panel included:
Paul Kuczko, who produced Music of Coal: Mining Songs from the Appalachian Coalfields, along with my friend Jack Wright. Kuczko is the Director of the Lonesome Pine Office on Youth in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.
Penny Loeb, author of Moving Mountains: How One Woman and her Community Won Justice from Big Coal, was senior editor at U.S. News and World Report and an investigative reporter for Newsday. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Michael Shnayerson is the author of Coal River, a book about the environmental lawyers and advocates fighting to stop mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he has also written The Car That Could and The Killers Within.
Afterwards. Penny and I went out for coffee at the Mudhouse.
