Wolfe drew on oral histories, interviews, geography, local rhymes, and coal advertisements for her Pulitzer Prize-winning piece "Anthracite Fields", an oratorio about the coal mining community of her native Pennsylvania which premiered in Philadelphia and was performed at the New York Philharmonic Biennial in the spring of 2014. In 2015–16, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, with first the Los Angeles Master Chorale and then the Danish Radio Vocal Society, gave "Anthracite Fields" its West Coast and European premieres, and Cantaloupe Music released the studio recording, featuring the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and the Bang on a Can All-Stars.