Alabama produces three Pulitzer Prizes, including two by a news outlet that's now online-only, and a book of history

The winner of the Fiction prize,
Appalachia's first since 1958

Two online-only publications covering Alabama and Mississippi, including the states' rural areas, were among Monday's winners of Pulitzer Prizes in journalism. In prizes for books, one on a rural Alabama county won the prize for History, and the Fiction prize went to Barbara Kingsolver's latest book based in rural Appalachia.

The top Pulitzer, for Public Service, went to The Associated Press for its coverage of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, and the finalists were the Austin American Statesman for its coverage of the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, and The Washington Post for its investigation of the fentanyl crisis. Perhaps indicating how close the Austin paper came to winning, the Uvalde shooting was mentioned among major news events in the script introducing the announcement of the prizes. 

The prize for Local Reporting was shared by two online-only publications: Mississippi Today, for Anna Wolfe's investigation that revealed how a governor steered millions of  "welfare dollars to benefit his family and friends, including NFL quarterback Brett Favre," and AL.com, for the series by John Archibald, Ashley Remkus, Ramsey Archibald (John's son) and Challen Stephens that revealed "how the police force in the town of Brookside preyed on residents to inflate revenue, coverage that prompted the resignation of the police chief, four new laws and a state audit," the announcement says.

AL.com is owned by the Newhouse family's Advance Publications, which stopped printing its newspapers in Birmigham, Mobile and Huntsville this year. It won another Pulitzer, for Commentary, Kyle Whitmire's  "measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion, told through tours of its first capital, its mansions and monuments – and through the history that has been omitted."

Barbour County (Wikipedia)

A book about a southeast Alabama county, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, by Jefferson Cowie of Vanderbilt University, won the History prize. The announcement said Barbour County, where George C. Wallace was born and raised, was "shaped by settler colonialism and slavery," and the book "illustrates the evolution of white supremacy by drawing powerful connections between anti-government and racist ideologies."

The Fiction prize was shared by Kingsolver for Demon Copperhead, "a masterful recasting of David Copperfield, narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them," and Hernan Diaz for Trust, "a riveting novel set in a bygone America that explores family, wealth and ambition through linked narratives rendered in different literary styles, a complex examination of love and power in a country where capitalism is king." Kingsolver lives in southwest Virginia and grew up in Kentucky; her Fiction prize was the first to go to an Appalachian writer since James Agee of Knoxville won it for A Death in the Family in 1958, reports Lilly Knoepp of Blue Ridge Public Radio.

Race and ethnicity figured in other rural-oriented prizes. The Audio Reporting prize went to the staff of Gimlet Media, "notably Connie Walker, whose investigation into her father’s troubled past revealed a larger story of abuse of hundreds of Indigenous children at an Indian residential school in Canada, including other members of Walker’s extended family, a personal search for answers expertly blended with rigorous investigative reporting."

African American banjo and fiddle player Rhiannon Giddens, a native of North Carolina, and Michael Abels won the Music prize for "Omar," an opera "about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries," the announcement says, adding that the work "respectfully represents African as well as African American traditions, expanding the language of the operatic form while conveying the humanity of those condemned to bondage." For the full list of prizes, click here.

Challenges to books some find objectionable are at 'levels not seen in decades' and have prompted counter-efforts

One of the top 10 targets

"Book challenges and bans have reached levels not seen in decades, according to officials at the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship and other advocates for free expression," report Heather Hollingsworth and Hillel Italie of The Associated Press.

Yael Levin, a spokeswoman for No Left Turn in Education, a national group opposed to what it calls a "Leftist agenda" for public schools, told AP, "There are some books with pornography and pedophilia that should absolutely be removed from K-through-12 school libraries." 

AP mentions several efforts in states and localities, including a Tennessee school board's banning of Art Spiegelman's Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust; a Missouri school district's effort to remove such books as Gender Queer, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Keise Laymon's memoir Heavy." 

Such efforts have prompted counter-efforts, AP reports: "Two anti-banning initiatives were launched in Pennsylvania," AP reports. "In Kutztown, eighth grader Joslyn Diffenbaugh formed a banned book club last fall that began with a reading of George Orwell's Animal Farm. The Pennridge Improvement Project has started a drive to purchase books that have been removed from schools, including Leslea Newman's Heather has Two Mommies and Kim Johnson's This is My America, and place them in small free libraries around the district."

The AP story concludes with a pictorial list of the top 10 books people wanted removed from schools and libraries in 2020. They include Sherman Aexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, about a Native American teenager; Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck's novel about migrant farm workers in the Depression, which has been “banned and challenged for racial slurs and racist stereotypes,” showing that intolerance comes from both sides; and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which has caught similar flak.

Quick hits: plague chipmunks; farmers' markets importance; what ballads and science fiction tell us about Appalachia . . .

Adorable and, possibly, dangerous.
Alamy Stock Photo by Sam Judy

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Hopefully not coming to a tree near you: the U.S. Forest Service has had to close several top hiking spots on Lake Tahoe because of chipmunks with the bubonic plague (most small-mammal infections are in the West.). A park ranger said wild rodents in the Sierra Nevada commonly carry the virus and advises people to keep their dogs on a leash. Read more here.

A small Black-majority town in Virginia is trying to keep a supermarket chain from building a warehouse there, worrying it could destroy the rural character of their town. Read more here.

To cap off National Farmers Market Week: The markets are growing in their role as essential sources of healthy food for the rich and poor, say two landscape architecture professors. Read more here.

What ballads and science fiction tell us about Appalachia's past, present and future. Read more here.

Rural communities should harness the once-in-a-generation windfall from the American Rescue Plan to invest in and improve school STEM programs, writes a rural education expert. Read more here.

The Agriculture Department is taking applications for loans and grants for rural start-ups, small businesses, non-profits, institutions of higher learning, and more. Read more here.

A new report provides a road map for expanding chestnut agri-forestry in the U.S. Read more here.

The Vera Institute of Justice is inviting applications for grants to rural organizations seeking alternative solutions to incarceration. Read more here.

Journalism chops and receptionist charm will get you a job and a home in West Virginia. Read more here.