Sarah Smarsh, author of the bestseller “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” and Ken Ward, Jr., investigative journalist for the Charleston Gazette-Mail and recipient of the 2018 MacArthur “Genius” Award, share a conversation about media misrepresentations of rural people, and what they see as the real concerns of those living in the country. They were keynote speakers at the Life in Rural America Symposium held in Charleston WV on May 21, and organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NPR, and Harvard School of Public Health.