by Cam Higgins “Should I use the autograph I’ve been practicing, or just sign my normal name?” Few 13-year-olds get the chance to ask their coach that question, but then again, Dante Defranco and his fellow players on the West…
When celebrated poet and Raleigh native Gibbons Ruark heard that Seamus Heaney, his cherished friend of more than 30 years, had died on Aug. 30, he was bereft. Heaney, the Irish Nobel Laureate, had been a hero, kindred spirit, and touchstone…
by P. Gaye Tapp A towering magnolia tree sheltered me from the rush of traffic on Glenwood Avenue for 10 years. There were moments when I thought a car might careen onto the sidewalk, crash into the stucco wall, invade…
by Samantha Thompson Hatem Most of Raleigh might have missed it, but Delta Rae, the edgy alt-pop band, has quietly set up home here over the past year, and its six members are now on their way to becoming some…
by Samantha Thompson Hatem The International Bluegrass Music Association and its members arrive in late September for the group’s annual conference, when they’ll turn downtown Raleigh into a bluegrass mecca with more than 150 bands, a street festival, and big-name…
by Liza Roberts photographs by Nick Pironio Artist Pete Sack, 37, has always been drawn to photographs of the human face. Strangers in yearbooks speak to him; archival snapshots of orphans, schoolchildren, and athletes hold unusual sway. One particular brunette…
by Jesma Reynolds photograph by Lissa Gotwals “If music be the food of love, play on.” So wrote William Shakespeare to open Twelfth Night, and so says Robert McMillan about living life to the fullest. The Raleigh trial lawyer turns…
by Todd Cohen When she was a first-grader at Mary P. Douglas Elementary School in Raleigh, Kari Howe Stoltz volunteered to help raise money for a bike-a-thon to support a girl in her neighborhood who had cystic fibrosis. She’s been…
by Ann Brooke Raynal photographs by Lissa Gotwals As with most stories about art, this one begins with the human eye. In this case, the eye belongs not to an artist but to a leading laser pioneer, whose vision is…
text and photograph by John Rosenthal In 1996, Gibbons Ruark, Raleigh native and well respected poet, wrote a splendid poem called Swamp Mallows. It was inspired by the remarkably beautiful Ben Berns painting of the same name in the North…
by Maureen Sherbondy Place your hand in the fire imagine it is a river that can only burn the skin of one who fears and sees flame. Jump out of the plane. No parachute. Fall and grab what you need…
by Settle Monroe The radio never worked and the air conditioning was shot in the 1968 Chevrolet Impala my father inherited from his grandmother. But when I was a 5-year-old girl riding to kindergarten with my dad, its run-down condition…
by Tracie Fellers “Why?” That’s what my mother says when I tell her, while we finish our Sunday dinner – post-Thanksgiving plates of turkey, oyster dressing, collard greens, and sweet potatoes. Mom and I had joked that my maternal grandmother and…
photographs by Nick Pironio In 1959, when Capitol Broadcasting Company founder A.J. Fletcher opened a lush and expansive azalea garden to the public on five West Raleigh acres surrounding WRAL-TV studios, he said he did it to pay “a tribute…