Orange County Arts Commission

Not too long ago, local music impresario Billy Maupin was walking into the Cat’s Cradle and took a moment to study the field behind the Carrboro nightclub. That gave him a thought.

You could say that Daniel Wallace has been working on his debut short story collection, Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars (Bull City Press, May 2025) for thirty years.

Around her Triangle stomping grounds, Rebecca Newton is best-known as the longtime big-voiced leader of Rebecca & the Hi-Tones. But she’s always been a major local-music presence offstage and behind the scenes, too.

As you’d expect of an ensemble named after a Leonard Cohen album title (and led by a frontman named after jazz guitar legend Django Reinhardt), Chapel Hill’s The Old Ceremony has always been one of the most elegant bands in town.

United Arts of Wake County, in partnership with the Raleigh Fine Arts Society, recently hosted the second Spoken Word Competition for high school students. On January 7, twelve finalists, including Carrboro High School’s Milagros (“Mili”) Lopez Secena,

PopUp Chorus events are come-one-come-all affairs in which a crowd of singers convene, rehearse, perform and record a couple of songs. The group’s videos then go out over social-media channels, and they’ve attracted favorable attention from many of their cover subjects.

Story via Arshia Simkin, The Underline, Orange County Arts Commission Gideon Young wears many...

Story via David Menconi, Down on Copperline, Orange County Arts Commission Hillsborough’s Mango...

Phyllis B. Dooney, a visual storyteller, who has worked in photography, film, and audio is the founder of PHOTO FARM—a new, collaborative photography studio in Chapel Hill.