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Minton Sparks is a wildly original poet, performance artist, novelist, teacher, and essayist born in a Tennessee college town and raised among her Southern family in and around Arkansas. She earned degrees from the University of the South and Vanderbilt University. Her appearances range from the prestigious Jonesborough National Storytelling Festival to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and the American Songbook Series at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Kyle Perrotti of Smoky Mountain News joined the broadcast to talk about his story on how various fire departments in the North Carolina Mountains are using drones to fight fires. This technology is making a difference. Haywood County was one of the first to implement it.

WNCW was thrilled to welcome Our State magazine's Editor in Chief, Elizabeth Hudson for a review of their December holiday edition. From the mountains to the coast, locations, people, and yummy recipes and gift ideas were shared. Our State is considered one of the best publications about a state across the nation.

Interview with Courtney Brown, assistant professor at Southern Methodist University at the Center for Creative Computation, a Fulbright Scholarship winner, coder, musician, inventor and composer using the medium of a dinosaur head. Learn more at courtney-brown.net.

The Biscuit Eaters are a 7 piece, bluegrass and old-time family string band from Surry County, NC with their youngest member playing fiddle and singing at 5 years old. Meredith is a homeschooling mother of six kids and their bass player, and father, Jason is a pastor.

Western North Carolina musical icon Betty Smith passed away on December 1, 2023. Betty was a performer of ballads and traditional songs for decades, but to say only this would be falling short of her large and living legacy. Throughout the course of her life, Betty also took on roles as an educator, an activist, an author, a playwright, and honorary doctorate recipient, and more. This episode looks back on a life of impact on and dedication to the people and life and WNC.

Madison County is home to a centuries old ballad singing tradition which has attracted interest for over a century. In 1916, Englishman, Cecil Sharp traveled to Western North Carolina to hear the old ballads that were no longer being freely sung in England. A new album revives this Transatlantic connection. We sat down with Thomm Jutz, singer-songwriter and co-producer of Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry, to learn more about the album and the ballad singing tradition.

This story, “Now Entering Alaska Time” is an excerpt from Waldman's recently released book, Now Entering Alaska Time. "He brings his instruments, a few fellow musicians, and his poems about surviving a plane crash (locals once called him"a walking dead man"), watching grizzlies feed in a garbage dump, and other adventures in the forty-ninth state."-The New Yorker

”My stories are true and promote good values -many about growing up on a farm in the NC Mountains with 5 sisters and one brother. I relive the stories as I tell them!”

Ray escaped the urban slums of Richmond, VA by joining the United States Army at the age of 17. As an infantryman and paratrooper, he served around the world and was awarded The Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman’s Badge, among many other decorations for his service. After 20 years, he retired and went back to school, earning his BS in Liberal Arts, MA in Public History, and EdS/EdD in Education Leadership, researching the relationship between parental behavior and African American academic success for his dissertation. During his time as an adjunct professor at Appalachian State University, his most popular courses were “The Souls of Black Folks: An Examination of African American Social Culture” and “Storytelling: Life in the Narrative,” which explored historic and contemporary uses of storytelling and oral history in America.