Posts by Lyndsey Gilpin

Tell us how COVID-19 is impacting your community

We want to tell stories of challenges, resilience, and response to the pandemic, and we need your help.

We’re hiring a part-time Gulf Coast correspondent!

Read more about how to apply.

Join us for an event in Robeson County, NC

Join journalists, community leaders, and folks from across the county for a conversation about media coverage, the stories important to you, and the future of rural North Carolina.

North Carolinians battle the $7.5-billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline

This eastern North Carolina community wants worthwhile economic development. Instead, it could be getting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Join us for a conversation in Eastern Kentucky

Local journalists, officials, and community leaders will discuss the media, the issues important to you, and the future of Appalachia.

POWERLINES—Call for submissions

Examining the intersection of climate change, justice, and infrastructure in the American South.

Southern communities revitalize their connection to electric co-ops

A dearth in representation on co-op boards has left rural, black communities without a voice.

Your Southern Stories

“It took moving away from the South for me to truly appreciate what it is. I’ve only been away from my home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for 4.5 years now (I moved to Alaska for three years after college, then to NYC for a year, now I’m in Portland, OR), and the list of things I miss is endless. Just to name a few: the smell of rain steaming off hot pavement, cicadas singing on tree trunks, pollution enhanced sunsets. I also have vivid memories of my sister and I roaming around my grandmother’s swampy backyard looking for crawfish, and it being an absolute blast.

I don’t know when I’ll be back, just that I will be back. All Southerners return home eventually, right?”

—Taylor Balkom, Alaska

“My favorite place growing up was the farm my dad was born on in West Virginia. Daisies growing in the fields, swaying with the breeze, are my absolute favorite flower. The daisies always remind me of my grandmother who passed away when I was in 3rd grade … The log cabin, then dilapidated, was where my dad was born. The doctor arrived in his horse drawn carriage and delivered him on Thanksgiving Day, 1944. As an adult I have had opportunities to return to the farm. It seems so different now. The old log cabin is completely gone now. The well has been filled in. The “mountain” to the “BIG rock” turned out to be much smaller than we realized. But I still love daisies because they still remind me of my feisty grandmother. And, honestly, if I listen really close I can still hear the Whiporwill singing as the sun goes down.”

— Annette Ellis, Kentucky