Evelyn R. Gregory is a Cinematography and Video Production educator based in Louisville, KY. She earned her undergraduate film degree from the historic Alabama A&M University and holds both a Master of Fine Arts and a Master of Science while residing and teaching in Kentucky. She describes herself as “just a kid from Cleveland with a passion for storytelling.”

Appalachia is not a monolith. 

It’s a sentiment shared time and time again, from news organizations centered on the Black experience in West Virginia to works of fiction based in the reality of growing up Indigenous in North Carolina. Over 20% of the Appalachian population is nonwhite - including Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous folks, as well as many other races and ethnicities - and the region has become increasingly diverse since 2010. And yet, mainstream representations of the region almost always look the same: white.