When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Build Possibility, Not Prisons: Art and Dissent in Appalachia
Posted on June 16, 2026 in Blog Posts
Authors:
Ashleigh Coren
Over a decade ago, I relocated from Boston to Morgantown, West Virginia, with very little frame of reference for the state beyond its association with coal, its Civil War origins, and a John Denver song I have made a point of never listening to. The years I spent there were a wonderful period of discovery, not just of West Virginia’s stunning natural landscape, but of its overlooked history as a progressive political hub: a site of labor organizing, environmental justice movements, and, whether you believe it or not, Black liberation.
It was also during that time that I learned the state and wider Appalachia are home to a significant number of prisons, a fact that shapes experiences across the region in ways that I had never considered. For a brief but formative period, I volunteered with the Appalachian Prison Book Project, an all-volunteer organization that provides books and educational materials to incarcerated people while also offering those of us on the outside a clearer view of what mass incarceration actually looks like up close. As a librarian and archivist, the work grounded me: sorting donations, navigating the strict and often arbitrary censorship rules governing what incarcerated people are permitted to read, and grappling with what it means to believe in the democratizing power of information while watching so many people be denied it.
A decade later, a flyer on Instagram pulled that chapter of my life back into focus. Rhizome DC, a community art space with deep roots in creative empowerment and community engagement, was hosting an exhibition on mass incarceration in Appalachia and its relationship to the nation’s capital. 500 Miles Out: Carceral Ties Between the District and Central Appalachia, curated by Gabrielle Christensen, features nine artists from Appalachian communities (including those residing in Federal Correctional Institutions) working across a range of media to illuminate the historic, cultural, economic, and environmental consequences of mass incarceration in America. Let me be clear about what this exhibition is and is not. It is not a show about victimhood. It is a show about agency—about the defiance, love, and the solidarity of artists, culture-bearers, and citizens who refuse to let their communities be defined solely by the institutions imposed upon them.
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| The writer touching Joy (2025) by Tiffany Pyette |
Among the works that stayed with me was a striking photograph by Jonas N.T. Becker made using coal dust photography, a process that draws on materials extracted directly from the land to make visible the state’s relationship to federal abandonment. The image, a black-and-white depiction of an unfinished bridge, lands differently when placed alongside other works of art documenting the construction of new prisons. The contrast is not subtle, nor should it be. What’s being built, and what’s being left undone or not preserved, tells us everything we need to know about where the money goes.
There is no complacency in this exhibition, though. A foraged media work by Tiffany Pyette assembled from birch bark, dried corn flour, mussel shells, and other materials gathered directly from the surrounding land invites viewers to touch it, to feel what’s actually there, what has always been there. It is a quiet but powerful assertion: we already have what we need. And a clip from Sylvia Ryerson’s film Calls from Home (2023) introduced me to WMMT 88.7 FM, a community radio station in Whitesburg, Kentucky, that broadcasts toll-free messages from family members to their incarcerated loved ones. In a landscape where so many systems are designed to sever connection, a radio signal becomes an act of resistance.
500 Miles Out is, at its core, an exhibition about communication—about what it means to reach across distance, whether geographic, institutional, or emotional, and insist on being heard. Like my years in West Virginia, it asked me to set aside my assumptions and look carefully at what a place can teach you when you let it. These are not distant problems. As the exhibition’s title quietly insists, what is happening 500 miles away may well be sitting right next to you on the DC Metro.
About the author:
Ashleigh Coren is a content strategist, educator, and curator based in the Washington, D.C. area.
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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.