Screening of the Hazel Dickens Documentary “It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song” w special guests - October 17, 2025

Mimi Pickering, the film’s director, will introduce the film and take questions. Singers Ginny Hawker and Kay Justice—who both sang with Hazel Dickens—will perform.

Mimi Pickering’s 2002 film follows the life and career of West Virginia native Hazel Dickens. Born in Montcalm in Mercer County, Dickens’ songs blazed many trails and influenced generations of songwriters, musicians and activists. After growing up in the southern West Virginia coalfields, she moved to Baltimore, where she worked in factories and became an outspoken advocate
for unions. One of the first women to play bluegrass, she was a champion of the working class and often stood with miners at rallies and picket
lines. In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded her a National Heritage Fellowship. Her music has appeared in films including “Harlan County USA” and “Matewan.” The film includes
interviews with Alison Krauss, Naomi Judd, Billy Bragg and Mike Seeger.

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Mimi Pickering is an award-winning filmmaker who has worked at Appalshop, a media, arts, and education center in Whitesburg, Kentucky, since 1972. Born in California, she moved to West Virginia
in 1971, drawn by the beauty of the mountains, the strength of the people, and the mining and extraction economics of Appalachia. Her other films include “The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man,” “Buffalo Creek Revisited,” “Chemical Valley,“ and “Anne Braden: Southern Patriot.”