AND NOW . . . the story of a regular man whose job is to find the Big Ideas peeking out from the small foibles and successes of our everyday lives . . . the story of a man who helps us not only to hear them, but also to feel them.
Act I, Scene I
Ira [...]

It’s official! The University of North Carolina Tar Heels kick off their 2009-2010 Men’s Basketball season tonight with the annual “Late Night with Roy” festivities at the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill. And that means UNC Press is off and running with the publication of One Fantastic Ride: The Inside Story of Carolina [...]

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court began their annual session with the newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor, joining in for the first time. And she jumped right in with both feet, asking lots of questions of the lawyers appearing before the court that day.
A couple of weeks ago, as part of the New York Yankees’ Hispanic Heritage [...]

If you are like me, you look forward to the weekends, but dread spending the annoying amounts of money that usually accompany your weekend entertainment. Well, this weekend, you are in luck.  If you are going to be in or around Chapel Hill this weekend, you MUST check out The North Carolina Literary Festival on [...]

“Drink your teeeeee!”
That would be the song of the male Eastern Towhee, according to the Learn Bird Songs! website. You can hear the songs of nearly three dozen species there, and hone your imitation on the way to Atlanta this weekend.
John Yow, the Armchair Birder, will be at the Decatur Book Festival Sunday afternoon at [...]

Looking for something new, fun and relatively inexpensive to do this summer? Several counties and towns in western North Carolina offer a variety of festivals, celebrations, and cultural events that feature bluegrass music, dance, and traditional food of Southern Appalachia. The festivals in western NC are a sample of what is offered all along the [...]

This week’s installment of Tar Heel Trek visit the county of Sampson, located in the coast plain of North Carolina. Formed in 1784, Sampson County is largely rural county that produces as many hogs as almost anywhere else in the country – the roughly 2 million hogs there outnumber their human neighbors 33 to one. [...]

Gary R. Bunt, senior lecturer in Islamic studies at the University of Wales, was kind enough to share his time and thoughts on the events surrounding the 2009 Iranian presidential election, the protests, and the deeply entrenched tensions between politics and religion. His most recent book, iMuslims, sheds new light on the nature of contemporary [...]

Last summer Rachel blogged about a new Mellon-funded project aimed at sharing scholarship on the civil rights movement. Last month, Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM) sponsored a wildly successful conference here at UNC to discuss the project and possibilities for scholarly collaboration. LCRM director Sylvia Miller described the conference this way:
All of the [...]

As Townsend, Tennessee, gears up for Troutfest 2009, Knox.com features a story about the book that will be helping generate funds for the fly-fishing exposition, Hunting and Fishing in the Great Smokies, by Jim Gasque.
Writer Chad Gay caught up with Dan Pitts, president of the Great Smoky Mountains Chapter of Trout Unlimited, who helped bring [...]

New York, NY – Today! Tuesday 4/21 at 6 pm – Ann Marie Stock, author of On Location in Cuba: Street Filmmaking during Times of Transition (hot off the press!), will be speaking at the Havana Film Festival at the King Juan Carlos Center.
Raleigh, NC – Wed., 4/22 at 11 am – Rob Christensen, author [...]

Upcoming author events, including a C-SPAN taping tonight!
Today, Tuesday, 4/14:

John & Dale Reed in Kernersville, NC -  Shakespeare & Company Books in Kernersville hosts the authors of Holy Smoke at 6 pm.

Lars Schoultz in Durham, NC – The author of That Infernal Little Cuban Republic will read and speak at the Regulator Bookshop at 7 [...]

The Tar Heels are on order by the Commander in Chief to win the NCAA tourney tonight. Go Heels!!
Here’s a preview of tonight’s celebration on Franklin Street. This video was shot on Saturday, when the Tar Heels beat Villanova in the final four. Hopefully any potential thunderstorms and tornadoes will happen sooner rather than later [...]

If you’re in NC, you’ve got a couple chances to catch up with our busily touring authors this week.
Tonight!!, Tuesday, March 24:

Nancy Carter Crump, reception @ 5 pm, reading @ 5:45pm, Wilson Library UNC-CH. The author of Hearthside Cooking will be featured as part of the Southern Historical Collection Book Series, featuring authors whose research [...]

Just minutes from now, our Point-Guard-in-Chief ™ will be releasing his brackets for the NCAA tournament on ESPN. But we’ve already learned that he’s got our Tar Heels in his final four!
Here at the Press, Joanne and I are in the home stretch, sort of . . . almost? . . . putting together the [...]