Remain: An Exhibit by L. Renee Downtown Library

Spring - Fall 2026 | DL - 2nd floor

After a mountain is stripped, blasted, displaced, and 'reclaimed,' what truly remains? 

About the Exhibit

Remain is an interdisciplinary poetry project by L. Renée, the West Virginia University Libraries' 2.02.6 Mountain Artist in Resident. Developed in collaboration with the West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVRHC), this exhibit serves as a poetic activation of archival records concerning mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. Through the residency, L. Renee accessed the environmental, geological, and community archives. In her work, she examines the endurance of both human and non-human life following violent ecological rupture. The exhibit transforms clinical and historical documents into layered acts of witness and remembrance. By utilizing a variety of poetic forms, includ­ing erasure, contrapuntal, found, and ekphrastic poetry, Renee challenges viewers to look closely at what is left behind in the wake of extraction. 

Find a selection of the resulting works on the Research Repository of WVU. Find L. Renée's process video on YouTube.

About L. Renee 

L. Renée is an interdisciplinary poet, performer, and nonfiction writer based in West Virginia. She is the granddaughter of a McDowell County coal miner who labored for 43 years in the belly of a mountain before dying of Black Lung. She is the great-granddaughter of Southwest Virginia tobacco farmers, who migrated to "West by God Virginia," as her family said, "to trade one kinda dirt for another kinda dirt." L. Renée carries her ancestors with her as co-creators in her work, which has won the international Rattle Poetry Prize, the Arkansas lnternational's Editor's Choice Poetry Prize, Appalachian Review's Denny C. Plattner Award, and the Gerald E. and Corrine L. Parsons Fund Award for Ethnology from the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center. She has earned grants and fellowships from the National Association of Black Storytellers, Cave Canem, the Watering Hole, Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets, Virginia Humanities, West Virginia Creative Network, Walking Together, UCROSS, and the Black Genius Foundation. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University. Her debut collection, Holler Root, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in 2.02.7.

About Mountain AIR 

The Mountain Artist in Residency (Mountain AIR) Program was developed by the WVU Art in the Libraries Committee. It connects artists with the rich environmental archives held at the WVRHC to inspire new creative work and public engagement. By focusing on collections that document de­cades of environmental activism, industry impact, and citizen response, the residency supports artistic interpretations that reveal the complex ecologi­cal story of West Virginia. 
Support 

This collaborative program is made possible by the generous support of the Appalachian Community Development Association and The Oakland Foundation.