Writer Matthew Neill Null calls West Virginia a museum of failed enterprise. He argues that industries like logging, coal mining, oil extraction, and now hydraulic fracturing, have irreversibly marked the state’s history and landscape.
Null has a long personal history with the area—his family has lived there since before it became a state, and his writing aims to explore the lesser-known stories of the land and the people who lived on it.
His debut novel “Honey from the Lion” (Lookout Books/2015) is set at the turn of the 20th century when the logging boom shook up the state’s environment and culture, leading to union agitation and the beginning of a centuries-long economic boom and bust cycle.
Host Frank Stasio talks to Matthew Neill Null about his book and state-wide appearances as part of a South Arts grant.