The Front Porch: Anna Sale on Loving and Leaving West Virginia

As host and executive producer of the hit podcast “Death, Sex & Money” from WNYC, Anna Sale asks famous people and regular folks about the things we need to talk more about, but don’t.

On this week’s “The Front Porch,” Sale talks about her complicated love of West Virginia, and the bittersweet experience of visiting home, once you know you’re gone for good.

Sale remembers starting her career as a journalist at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. She said people would come up to her and say, “That was a great story. Please don’t leave.”

She says moving to a larger city for your career may happen in all small cities and towns, but “it has more of an edge here…I think there is a pride certainly in cheering on West Virginians who are successful outside of West Virginia. But there also comes with it that sense of loss.”

“But it is a strange thing when you are an ambitious young person, who’s excited to explore the world, to have people who love and the community you care about say, we hope you’re successful, but maybe not so much that you leave,” she said.

Sale is interviewing New York Times book reviewer Dwight Garner, a Fairmont native and former Charlestonian, at a live, free show on June 24 at the Clay Center in Charleston. You can RSVP here.

Subscribe to “The Front Porch” podcast on iTunes or however you listen to podcasts.

An edited version of “The Front Porch” airs Fridays at 4:50 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s radio network, and the full version is available above.

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