Patrick Holt is a lifelong lover of comics. In 2011, Holt started a job as a library assistant at the Durham County Library, where he reconnected with his passion for the medium through a colleague, Amy Godfrey. Together, the pair established the Durham Comics Fest, an annual celebration of comics, graphic novels, and the community of comics readers and creators behind them. After 11 years at the library, Holt now works as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. He created Triangular Comics & Zines, an online comics store, earlier this...

The mass of red-shirt wearers inside the Durham County meeting hall was abuzz with excitement. Symone Kiddoo, president of the Durham Association of Educators (DAE) teachers union, ushered members into the long wooden pews that faced the front of the hall where county staff and the board of county commissioners waited to deliberate over the 2024–25 fiscal year budget one final time. The commissioners were expected to vote that evening, June 10, in favor of the school board’s historic $27 million ask for local funding after the county finance director,...

Stephanie Clare Smith: Everywhere the Undrowned: A Memoir of Survival and Imagination | UNC Press, January 2024 I have at least one thing in common with North Carolina–based writer Stephanie Clare Smith: we share a fascination with Harry Houdini, the great magician, escape artist—and keeper of secrets. “Harry Houdini said that his audience never saw the hours of torturous self-training it took to overcome fear and master the illusion,” Smith writes in her new memoir. “They saw only the miraculous way he held it together.” The book is set in...

Scott Ellsworth | The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph In 1944, 20 years before the height of the civil rights movement, an all-Black basketball team from the North Carolina College for Negroes—now known as North Carolina Central University, or NCCU—and an all-white team of Duke University medical school students put their lives on the line to meet at the NCCU gym for a clash of the titans. At the time, the idea of a Black team competing against a white team was unheard...

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. Pitted with rust, an empty water tower looms over this old mill village. In its short shadow rests an organic community garden, where overripe tomatoes dangle from dying vines and pepper plants droop, yellowed and parched. It’s peak growing season, but the garden gates are locked. This is the most visible sign of the unintended consequences of an attempt...

Writer Ryan Cocca, a longtime contributor to the INDY, re-launched the online magazine/newsletter project Super Empty earlier this year. What began years ago as a scrappy personal music blog has evolved into something more ambitious: A sleek, smart place to platform writing on North Carolina rap and in doing so, enrich, energize, and help sustain one of the most vibrant and underrated hip-hop scenes in the country. Every Friday, with some exceptions (like today), the INDY co-publishes a Super Empty “Song of the Week”—you can explore the archive here. As...

There was a buoyancy in the room on Monday night as Durham city council members filed into their seats at the dais. City staff members shook hands and congratulated one another. More than half of the community members in attendance—a team of baseball and softball Little League champions, folks from the refugee community, and a young boy bringing awareness to cleft and craniofacial differences—looked on with excitement; they were being honored during ceremonial agenda items. “I’m really excited about tonight,” said Mayor Leonardo Williams. “The room looks really different than...

Sitting at the very heart of the North Carolina Museum of Art’s campus—nestled amid gardens, meadows, woodlands, art installations, and sculpture—is the Joseph M. Bryan, Jr., Theater in the Museum Park. Here, for over a quarter of a century, we have welcomed some of America’s finest singers-songwriters, and acclaimed musical ensembles, including Gladys Knight, Neko […]

Sitting at the very heart of the North Carolina Museum of Art’s campus—nestled amid gardens, meadows, woodlands, art installations, and sculpture—is the Joseph M. Bryan, Jr., Theater in the Museum Park. Here, for over a quarter of a century, we have welcomed some of America’s finest singers-songwriters, and acclaimed musical ensembles, including Gladys Knight, Neko Case, Rhiannon Giddens, the Avett Brothers, and Lake Street Dive. This year we invite you to join us again for our annual outdoor concert and film series, sponsored by First Citizen’s Bank. We’re excited to...