Orange County Arts Commission

It takes most people a long time to figure out what they want to do as their life’s work. But Rody J. Huertas was just seventeen when he found his calling.

In 2021, Amanda Gorman—America’s first ever National Youth Poet Laureate —captured the public imagination in her canary yellow suit as she delivered an original poem at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Dexter Romweber died over a year ago, at the way-too-young age of 57. But traces of the late great roots-music giant remain around his old Orange County stomping grounds, like a mural in the alley behind Chapel Hill nightclub Local 506.

Sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time. That’s what happened to Diana Newton, a local Carrboro artist who specializes in sculptures. Before her retirement in 2019, Newton had spent a decades long career in psychotherapy and leadership development consulting

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,