Shape-shifters in Durham. Mobsters in Wilmington. Biker gangs in Wake County. Women on the run in North Carolina mountains. Lots of romance on the coast. Readers of our sister blog, Read North Carolina Novels, know that North Carolina has been the setting for all kinds of fictional tales. Just as the themes and subject matter of these novels have been all over the map, so have the locations-almost. Try as we might, we have not found a novel for each of our 100 counties. Gentle readers, can you help us? Take a look at this list, and let us know if you’re aware of a novel set in any of these counties:
Alexander, Alleghany, Beaufort, Camden, Cherokee, Columbus
Franklin, Gates, Greene, Harnett, Lee, Lenoir, Lincoln
Mitchell, Perquimans, Pitt, Stokes, Union, Vance, Washington, Yadkin.

“It made me furious, it filled me with both hatred and pity, and it made me ashamed. Some one of us should have been there with her! I dawdled in Europe for nearly yet another year, held by my private life and my attempt to finish a novel, but it was on that bright afternoon that I knew I was leaving…

“I could, simply, no longer sit around in Paris discussing the Algerian and the black American problem. Everybody else was paying their dues, and it was time I went home and paid mine.”

—Writer James Baldwin, recalling his reaction to seeing in the news kiosks along Boulevard Saint-Germain the image of Dorothy Counts being spat on as she entered Harding High School in Charlotte in 1957. (Observer photographer Don Sturkey’s negatives from that day belong to the North Carolina Collection.)

As someone who began work for newspapers in the lead-type era, I have to wonder: Would Baldwin have been so viscerally moved by seeing Counts’ image online?

For those of you that don’t know, the 2009 North Carolina Literary Festival will be on UNC’s campus September 10-13, 2009. Another thing that you may not know is that the Literary Festival is now on Twitter. Check it out at: nc_litfest.

Described by the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography as a “minister, writer, lecturer, lawyer, playwright, producer, director, actor, legislator, and clerk of the federal court for the eastern district of North Carolina,” Thomas Dixon, Jr. was a man of many professions. Born near Shelby, North Carolina, on this day in 1864, Dixon is best known as the author of The Clansman, which started as a book, was made into a play, and then a movie called The Birth of a Nation. He also wrote The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865-1900, which historian Joel Williamson describes as a “twin plea for the exclusion of the [African American] from American society and for a reunion of North and South.” The image above is a publisher’s circular from ca. 1902 that can be found among the North Carolina Collection’s broadsides. To view other items about Dixon at the UNC Library click here. To view items written by Dixon click here.

A brief notice in yesterday’s New York Times brought the exciting news that Look Homeward, Angel, the play based on Thomas Wolfe’s 1929 novel, is returning the Broadway. While attempts to make a movie out of the autobiographical story set in western North Carolina have repeatedly failed, the play by Ketti Frings has been very successful, revived countless times around the country since it first premiered in 1957.

I’m excited to announce the release of the beta site for North Carolina Maps, the historic map digitization project by the North Carolina State Archives, UNC-Chapel Hill University Library, and Outer Banks History Center.

The site currently includes over 750 maps, primarily from the State Archives and the North Carolina Collection. Maps from the Outer Banks History Center will be added in the fall. There is an impressive variety of maps on the site, including many of the earliest maps of North Carolina, state highway maps, Coast and Geodetic Survey maps, and — my personal favorite — soil survey maps. North Carolina Maps also includes at least one map for each of North Carolina’s 100 counties.

New maps and features will be added to the site on a regular basis over the next two years. North Carolina Maps is made possible by a Library Services and Technology Act grant distributed through the State Library of North Carolina.

I am happy to announce that the North Carolina Collection’s new blog–Read North Carolina Novels–has officially gone live! This blog replaces the old Read North Carolina Novels website; it is updated, expanded, and provides more ways to search for the kinds of North Carolina-set books that might interest you. You can search for books by keyword or author, or browse based on genre, county, region, or year of publication. We’ve also categorized books for kids, series books, and novels that have fictional N.C. settings. I’m especially excited that the new site also offers you the opportunity to make comments and suggestions. We will be adding to the blog regularly as the North Carolina Collection acquires new titles, and we welcome suggestions of books to add to our list.

So, whether you are already a fan of fiction set in North Carolina or just looking for your next summer read, you should check it out. To visit, click here, or on the “Read North Carolina Novels” link in the right-hand column.

Today’s Raleigh News and Observer reports that Tim Tyson’s award-winning Blood Done Sign My Name will be made into a movie. Luckily, it appears that the film will be shot in North Carolina, with the article mentioning potential locations such as Hillsborough, Oxford, and my adopted hometown of Mocksville.

Thomas Clayton Wolfe was born on this day in 1900 in Asheville, N.C. North Carolina’s most renowned writer, author of Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again, is still celebrated in his hometown. Asheville is host this week to the Thomas Wolfe Festival, and the recently-restored Thomas Wolfe Memorial, site of Julia Wolfe’s former boarding house, remains a popular tourist destination and should be near the top of the to-do list of anyone visiting the Paris of the South.

One of the highlights of the Wolfe Festival will be Saturday night’s fundraising dinner at the Old Kentucky Home. Guests will be given a rare opportunity to eat in the original dining room of an early twentieth-century boarding house. They’ll be presented with a traditional menu, but hopefully it won’t stick too close to the sort of fare offered by the notoriously parsimonious Julia Wolfe.

Library Journal is a semi-monthly magazines aimed at librarians. I read it regularly because it’s a good source of book reviews and news on forthcoming books. Like a number of other reviewing sources, Library Journal uses a star to draw the reader’s attention to a book that is particularly good. The July 2007 issue contained reviews of four forthcoming books from North Carolina authors, all of which received starred reviews. Mark your calendars for these books:

Sarah Addison Allen. Garden Spells (due out in August)
John Hart. Down River (October publication date)
Margaret Maron. Hard Row: A Deborah Knott Mystery (due out in August)
Robert Morgan. Boone: A Biography (October publication date)