As the summer days grow longer and hotter, few things are more tempting than finding an activity that involves air conditioning—mercifully, new and ongoing exhibits at art museums across the Triangle offer enriching, colorful ways to beat the heat. Here are a few of the many local exhibitions ongoing or opening over the summer. To Take Shape and Meaning | North Carolina Museum of Art | Through July 28 Featuring carefully curated work by Native American artists across the United States, To Take Shape and Meaning is NCMA’s first major...

It’s the season of vacation reads, of frothy paperbacks by the Eno and overambitious nonfiction tomes weighing down tote bags. The Triangle has no shortage of talented writers, and we’ve been hoping to do a special reading issue for some time now—what better time than summer? As fate would have it, though, the books that happened to come across our desks belie the beach-read feel of this issue’s cover: shadows supplant sunny skies, and within these author profiles, interviews, and book reviews, there’s deep childhood trauma, a few cults, and...

Stephanie Smith’s nearly eight-year run as a home childcare provider in Durham is coming to an end just as the Child Care Stabilization Grants that came from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) expire. The childcare veteran with more than 20 years of experience says she can no longer afford to keep the doors open due to rising expenses and state and federal childcare subsidies that haven’t kept pace with the cost of doing business. So, Smith made the tough decision to close the doors to her Kids Rising into...

Much has changed in Chapel Hill and its centerpiece public university, over the years, but it can still feel frozen in time. Cresting Franklin Street on my way to meet the writer Joanna Pearson, one recent morning, I spot an older woman kneeling by a row of sorority houses, trimming rose bushes; a block or so away, students with backpacks slung low over Carolina blue T-shirts mill in front of Sutton’s Drug Store. Farther still down the road, a man with dreads bound up in a red bandana crosses the...

In Gravity and Grace, a posthumous collection of Simone Weil’s philosophical reflections, she observes, “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied. Real evil is gloomy, dull, and boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Is this still the case today? Or has the internet killed the romantic appeal of so-called evil monsters? This question is posed in Lindsay Starck’s new novel, Monsters We Have Made. Starck, who is now based in Minnesota, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and is the author of Noah’s Wife. The novel begins...

Two small business owners who grew up in rural North Carolina have taken similar journeys that led them to open businesses in downtown Raleigh in recent years. Both emphasize creating inclusive spaces that provide a sense of community for all, including the LGBTQ community. “I wanted a space for people like me. People who might not always feel like they fit in everywhere,” says chef Gregory Hamm, owner of Libations 317. “I wanted a place where you could be yourself and shop,” says Rusty Sutton, co-owner of The Green Monkey....

On a recent evening in Durham, on the second floor of Letters Bookshop, the room is hushed. Two people sit reading; neither is talking or reading the same book, but they are there together—sort of. It’s the second Tuesday of the month, one of the two evenings that Letters hosts a chapter of the Silent Book Club hour (the other evening is the fourth Thursday of the month). Described as a “happy hour for introverts” on its website, the Silent Book Club (SBC) has over 1,000 chapters in 50 countries....