I Want to Show You More By Jamie Quatro Grove Press, 206 pp. Flyleaf Books Chapel Hill March 19, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books Raleigh March 20, 7:30 p.m. According to her bio in her debut short story collection, Jamie Quatro lives with her husband and kids in Lookout Mountain, Ga. This fact becomes eyebrow-raising […]
Brian Howe
In a lavish setting, an area studio aims to reshape how entertainment gets made
Michael Tiemann came into the music industry with an unlikely backstory: In 1989, with $6,000 and no business experience, he cofounded Cygnus Solutions, the first company to provide commercial support for free, open-source software. “Everyone said it was silly,” he remembers, “because while obviously the open-source software was better than the proprietary, nobody would pay […]
Testing the case for the e-reader with two very different books
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice By Terry Tempest Williams Picador, 228 pp. Terry Tempest Williams will be at Quail Ridge Books and Music on Thursday, March 7, at 7:30 p.m. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia By Mohsin Hamid Riverhead, 228 pp. Mohsin Hamid will be at Quail Ridge Books […]
How Wesley Wolfe hand-lathes a record
Print layout JPG • PDF Read the accompanying article PREPARATION After you send Wesley Wolfe your music, he opens it in ProTools for frequency analysis. The vibrations of certain high-end frequencies can upset the cutter-head of the lathe, while very low frequencies can make the record’s groove so deep it collapses on itself and pops […]
Shelby Smoak comes out the other side of suffering in new memoir Bleeder
Bleeder By Shelby Smoak Michigan State University Press 214 pp. Shelby Smoak reads from Bleeder at Flyleaf Books on Saturday, Feb. 9, at 2 p.m., with local musical guests. Before Shelby Smoak moved away from North Carolina in 2011, he and I used to sometimes meet in Carrboro coffee shops to talk about our writing. […]
Carrboro musician Wesley Wolfe has catalyzed the lathe-to-turntable movement of local music
See how Wesley Wolfe hand-lathes a record There were wax cylinders and cassette tapes, compact discs and (at the very end) MP3s, but the 20th century’s music belonged to the vinyl record. Despite more portable formats and vast technological advancements, that romance continues and grows: Americans bought 4.6 million records last year, up from 3.9 […]
NC Comicon puts comics first
NC Comicon Nov. 17–18 Durham Convention Center Comic book conventions flourish worldwide, from tiny homegrown affairs to huge corporate spectacles. San Diego Comic-Con International began as the former, in 1970, before growing into the latter. Now, when people generically refer to “Comic-Con,” they’re probably talking about San Diego. Over four days last July, the event […]
Artivists Pierce Freelon and Stephen Levitin take their Beat Making Lab to the DRC
Dick Gordon interviews Petna Ndaliko Katondolo and Chérie Rivers Ndaliko about the UNC Beat Making Lab and Yole!Africa for the Visualing Human Rights conference at the UNC Center for Global Initiatives Saturday, Nov. 3. On the first day of July 2012, Pierce Freelon, of Durham jazz-rap group The Beast, and Stephen Levitin, a DJ and […]
Live: Jens Lekman comes to Norf Carolina
Charmed, we’re sure: Jens Lekman Jens LekmanCat’s Cradle, CarrboroMonday, Oct. 15 “How are you doing, Norf Carolina?” Jens Lekman asked at the Cat’s Cradle Monday night, half-sincere and half-droll, in that unmistakable Swedish accent that turns father into “fodder” and you into “chew.” Lekman is the epitome of love-it-or-hate it, singing elaborately written and arranged […]
Lydia Davis, your favorite writer’s favorite writer, visits Duke this week
Lydia Davis will deliver a free public reading at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18, at McClendon Commons, near the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions on Campus Drive. Duke Performances recently brought the medieval singing quartet Anonymous 4 to First Presbyterian Church in downtown Durham. On the program was love fail, a ravishing evening-length vocal […]

