Search results for ""Blair""

Based on extensive original research and interviews with a wide variety of key players, this is a compelling assessment of the Labour Party in power. Beginning with a detailed account of the development of New Labour, including the ideological tensions within the party, Eric Shaw provides a sophisticated analysis of the Labour Government during an unprecedented period of power. Offering the most detailed examination yet published of the actual performance of the party in several key social and economic policy areas, Losing Labour’s Soul? will be of enormous interest to students of British politics, labour history and party politics.

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Anglo-American relations, the so-called ‘Special Relationship’, reached a new era with the rise of New Labour and the New Democrats in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Richard Carr reveals the untold story of the transatlantic ‘Third Way’­ by analysing how Tony Blair and Bill Clinton won power and ultimately how they lost it. Using newly unearthed archives and interviews with key players, he investigates the relationship between the administrations and sheds new light on big events such as the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the handover to George W. Bush, and the controversial Iraq War.

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Nearly forty years ago, Sir Lewis Namier's studies showed that there were no organized national political parties in England during the middle of the eighteenth century, and historians have assumed that much the same statement could be made about het period from 1780's to the 1830's. Professor Ginter questions that assumption, and demonstrates that the origins of modern British electoral organization and political parties can be dated at about the end of the American War. The papers of William Adam at Blair Adam reveal that the tone and techniques of opposition politics began to undergo a fundamental change during the 1780's. In these years the Whig Opposition was unified under the leadership of the Duke of Portland and Chales James Fox, and it developed a surprisingly extensive political orientation. The party broke out of the restrictive parliamentary orientation that had heretofore characterize opposition politics and turned ot the country a large for support of its program and personnel. By 1790 British general elections were no longer contested exclusively by individuals and ad hoc committees, Adam, the party's political manager, in collaboration with the Duke of Portland, directed the general election campaign of 1790 from offices in Burlington House, and sent party agents and funds into those constituencies in which candidates had decided to stand a contest, but also expended funds in an effort to secure new seats for party members unable to find a likely constituency through their own efforts. The present volume, a selection from the family papers at Blair Adam, fully demonstrates the extent and quality fo the electoral organization of the Whig Opposition. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

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By following the lessons in Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair, you can make any character—person, animal, or object—come to life through animated movement! While animators must first know how to draw, the animation process involves much more than just good drawing skills. In this new edition, acclaimed cartoon animator Preston Blair shares his vast practical knowledge to explain and demonstrate the many techniques of cartoon animation. Learn the knowledge and skills animators must have, including: How to construct original cartoon characters by developing a character’s shape, personality, features, and mannerisms How to animate movements such as running, walking, dancing, posing, skipping, and more How to create realistic-looking mouth movements during dialogue, as well as body movements and facial expressions while the character is speaking The finer points of animating a character, including drawing key character poses and in-betweens Full of expert advice from animation pioneer Preston Blair, and packed with helpful drawings and diagrams, the new edition of Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair is a book no animation enthusiast should be without. THIS REVISED EDITION INCLUDES:Chapter 1: Getting Started Tools & Materials Drawing Basics Animation MethodsChapter 2: Cartoon Construction Parts of a Cartoon Character The Body The Head Facial Expressions The HandsChapter 3: Character Design & Development Cartoon Examples The Cute Character The Screwball Type The “Pugnacious” Character More Animal Characters Fictional People ChildrenChapter 4: Basic Character Movement Comics to Life Line of Action Rhythm & Design Basic MovementChapter 5: Animation Principles Beyond Simple Movements Rough Sketches Balance Paths of Action Animation EffectsChapter 6: Animated Acting Expressing an Attitude Three Rules for Actors Body Language DialogueThe Collector’s Series offers a broad range of projects across a variety of mediums and genres, such as drawing, oil, acrylic, watercolor, cartooning, calligraphy, and others. This series is suitable for beginning to intermediate artists, and each title features in-depth instruction about how to work with the tools of the trade, master techniques, and use newfound skills in practical application.

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‘Mark Vickers has given us a wonderful new reference book of the beliefs (and non-beliefs) of 20th-century PMs – a meaty volume that can also be consumed as a social history of British religion.’ THE TELEGRAPH ‘This carefully researched and well-written study reveals the religious faith of our Prime Ministers, or lack of it, in vivid colours. Prepare to be shocked and surprised as the author lays bare their souls.’ SIR ANTHONY SELDON Mark Vickers’ acclaimed volume on the faith of the twentieth-century Prime Ministers casts a new perspective on these holders of the highest political office in the realm. While there are biographies aplenty on the 18 men and 1 woman who took up residence behind the famous black door, it is notable that that many of these works fail to reflect an important – sometimes the most important – aspect of the life of their subject. God in Number 10 rectifies this omission, offering intriguing insights into Margaret Thatcher’s legendary ‘Sermon on the Mound’, Tony Blair’s perception of Jesus as a modernizer, Arthur Balfour’s recourse to spiritualism, Stanley Baldwin’s mystical experiences, and Winston Churchill’s involvement with astrology. The book considers the role of religion generally in the political classes of the period, the reasons for the declining influence of faith in the public forum, and the relationship between Church and State. The families of H. H. Asquith, Bonar Law, Ramsay MacDonald, Neville Chamberlain, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson have all expressed their support for God in Number 10 and, where able, helped in the research, while John Major has assisted fully.

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In 1921 Blair Mountain in southern West Virginia was the site of the country's bloodiest armed insurrection since the Civil War, a battle pitting miners led by Frank Keeney against agents of the coal barons intent on quashing organized labor. It was the largest labor uprising in US history. Ninety years later, the site became embroiled in a second struggle, as activists came together to fight the coal industry, state government, and the military- industrial complex in a successful effort to save the battlefield-sometimes dubbed 'labor's Gettysburg'-from destruction by mountaintop removal mining.The Road to Blair Mountain is the moving and sometimes harrowing story of Charles Keeney's fight to save this irreplaceable landscape. Beginning in 2011, Keeney-a historian and great-grandson of Frank Keeney-led a nine-year legal battle to secure the site's placement on the National Register of Historic Places. His book tells a David-and-Goliath tale worthy of its own place in West Virginia history. A success story for historic preservation and environmentalism, it serves as an example of how rural, grassroots organizations can defeat the fossil fuel industry.

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Explores how Islamic art and architecture were made: their materials and their social, political, economic and religious context

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As two of the longest serving prime ministers in Europe, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern were in power during one of the most tumultuous periods of European integration. This book offers a unique and fascinating insight into how they responded to the demands and opportunities of European Union membership at the national level. Drawing on extensive interviews with key figures, it explores how the two leaders sought to radically reshape the EU policy making process in the UK and Ireland in order to further their strategic policy agendas. It therefore asks three key questions. How did the national EU policy process change between 1997 and 2007? To what extent did the UK and Irish policy processes converge or diverge? Did the reforms enhance the projection of national policy?These important empirical and comparative questions are related to broader theoretical and conceptual debates concerning Europeanisation. By employing highly innovative conceptual and analytical frameworks, the book considers what these reforms tell us about the nature of the ‘EU effect’ in different member states. Do governments simply adjust to EU-level pressures for change or try to adapt strategically in order to maximise their influence? Are the changes attributable to political agency or do they derive from longer-term structural developments in Brussels? These timely questions should be of great interest to both students and academics of European, British and Irish politics, policy practitioners within government, as well as anyone concerned with understanding the politics and policies that defined these two influential prime ministers.

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The Civil War forced America finally to confront the contradiction between its founding values and human slavery. At the center of this historic confrontation was Abraham Lincoln. By the time this Illinois politician had risen to the office of president, the dilemma of slavery had expanded to the question of all African Americans’ future. In this fascinating new book Paul Escott considers the evolution of the president’s thoughts on race in relation to three other, powerful – and often conflicting – voices.Lincoln’s fellow Republicans Charles Sumner and Montgomery Blair played crucial roles in the shaping of their party. While both Sumner and Blair were opposed to slavery, their motivations reflected profoundly different approaches to the issue. Blair’s antislavery stance stemmed from a racist dedication to remove African Americans from the country altogether. Sumner, in contrast, opposed slavery as a crusader for racial equality and a passionate abolitionist. Lincoln maintained close personal relationships with both men as he wrestled with the slavery question. In addition to these antislavery voices, Escott also weaves into his narrative the other extreme, of which Lincoln was politically aware: the virulent racism and hierarchical values that motivated not only the Confederates but surprisingly many Northerners and which were embodied by the president’s eventual assassin, John Wilkes Booth.Sumner, Blair, and violent racists like Booth each represent forces with which Lincoln had to contend as he presided over a brutal civil war and faced the issues of slavery and equality lying at its root. Other books and films have provided glimpses of the atmosphere in which the president created his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln’s Dilemma evokes more fully and brings to life the men Lincoln worked with, and against, as he moved racial equality forward.

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Mary E. Folsom Blair was just a name on a listing sheet when young writer Phil Primack bought her Epping, New Hampshire, property in 1974. As he learned more about this lifelong teacher, Quaker, and early advocate for outdoor education, his reporter bones began to twitch. Over decades, Primack talked to her former students and relatives, tracking down Mary’s most accurate life record: letters and journals dating 1897, when she was fifteen. Her sharp mind and creative soul grapple with the social restraints of her time and “the pain this world holds for a woman.” Mary pens her hopes and bares her despair as young chums die, her classroom ways are challenged, relationships with men and women end until—resigned to her fate as “spinster that was, is and ever shall be”—she meets her Hero on ice. With her collected papers preserved at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, Mary Folsom Blair will teach in a digital forever.

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Over its fifty-year existence, John F. Blair, Publisher, was known for its Southern folklore—its tales of ghosts, goblins, ghouls, spirits, witches, devils, phantoms, haints, boogers, boo-daddies, plat-eyes, demons, apparitions, Doppelgangers, banshees, disappearing hitchhikers, pirate legends, ghost dogs, dog ghosts, dogs who see ghosts . . . In recognition of its golden anniversary, the company published this volume of twenty stories culled from its folklore collections. Readers will likely be impressed at the timeless quality of the tales, some of which have never been out of print since they first appeared in the 1960s. And you may be surprised to learn of their broad appeal, the collections having sold a total of over six hundred thousand copies. Some of these tales are now being enjoyed by their third generation of readers. If you don’t know what a coffin baby is, read “Milk and Candy” by Randy Russell and Janet Barnett. If you’d like to meet a real-life pirate who’d make a better Hollywood character than any swashbuckler yet seen on celluloid, you’ll enjoy “Stede Bonnet” by Nancy Roberts. If there’s a place in your heart for a pair of lifesaving little dogs who’ve scampered on the same South Carolina beach for over a hundred years, try “Pawleys Island Terriers” by Elizabeth Robertson Huntsinger. If you prefer folklore with a historical touch, you can learn about Theodosia Burr Alston in Charles Harry Whedbee’s “Lady in Distress” and about Francis Marion in Daniel W. Barefoot’s “Ghostly Legacy of the Swamp Fox.” The folklorists included here claim stomping grounds from the high peaks and mountain hollows to the flatlands to the swamps to the barrier islands to the briny deep. What they share is a love of their subject and the ability to bring it to life on the page. This anthology was compiled by the staff of John F. Blair, Publisher.

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John F. Blair, Publisher, continues its Real Voices, Real History™ series with Voices from the Outer Banks. This volume presents the actual words of the people who lived the uncommonly rich history of this chain of barrier islands stretching from the Virginia border southward through Cape Lookout. Readers will enjoy contemporary accounts of the first British settlement in North America and the birth of the first English child on American soil. They’ll read 18th-century letters, articles, and poems about the bloody death of Blackbeard, arguably the most famous of all the pirates. They’ll read the news account of the first powered airplane flights in human history. And the editorial that created America’s first national seashore. And the words of family members who once inhabited the nation’s most iconic lighthouse—part of a matched set of four. Topics include “the Graveyard of the Atlantic,” in a nod to the rough waters that over the centuries have claimed hundreds of vessels, and “Torpedo Junction,” site of “the Great American Turkey Shoot,” the latter nickname bestowed by German submariners during World War II. The volume includes first-person accounts of Civil War battles, a freedmen’s colony, hunt clubs that drew the first wealthy tourists, and lifesavers who used horses to pull surfboats to the water and fired lines by cannon to wrecked vessels. Readers will even hear contemporary stories of the Boy Scout troop that rode ponies descended from ancient shipwrecked animals. Stephen Kirk was an editor at John F. Blair, Publisher, for 27 years. He has a B.A. from St. Lawrence University and an M.F.A. from UNC-Greensboro. A story he wrote while working on his M.F.A. appeared in the Greensboro Review and was subsequently selected by John Updike for reprinting in the Best American Short Stories series. Since then, he has written First in Flight: The Wright Brothers in North Carolina and Scribblers: Stalking the Authors of Appalachia. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "More often, however, Kirk wisely lets his “Voices” do the talking. The result is a pocket volume which should make old Banks hands feel nostalgic and strangers want to go." - Ben Steelman Star News Online

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An Oprah Daily pick for spring 2023 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction Finalist A woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s seeks a thoroughly American life. Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who are building a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town. This town, in the first decades of the 20th century, is filled with Russian transplants and a new church with a dome. Here, boys quit grade school for the coal mines and girls are married off at fourteen. The young pair up, give birth to more babies than they can feed, and make shaky starts in their new world. However, Yelena craves a different path. Will she find her happy American ending or will a dreaded Russian e

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An eclectic collection by writers who have lived, worked, and played in Key West, Florida. Key West has long been America’s most vibrant writers' colony, tracing its writerly roots to Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Robert Frost, John Hersey, Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, and Elizabeth Bishop. More recently, Thomas McGuane, Robert Stone, Judy Blume, Robert Richardson, Ann Beattie, Philip Caputo, Alison Lurie, and Meg Cabot have added their luster to the island’s literary heritage. This collection includes a treasure trove of more than sixty essays, reminiscences, musings, and poems about Key West. It features the town’s best-known writers: Lurie, Blume, Caputo, Cabot, McGuane, Beattie, Shames, Lee Smith, Frank Deford, Phyllis Rose, Glenn Frankel, Joy Williams, Barbara Ehrenreich, Billy Collins, and on and on.

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In this beautiful book of photographs and short essays, some of Appalachia’s best-known writers profile each other and the place they call home. Edited by Bloodroot novelist Amy Greene and her husband Trent Thomson, this book also features Wendell Berry, Lee Smith, Crystal Wilkinson, Ron Rash, Wiley Cash, Silas House, Jason Kyle Howard, Adriana Trigiani, and others. Part photo book, part essay collection, and all praise for the mountains and valleys of the region, this book collects some of the region’s greatest literary treasures for a generation of readers.

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Although legal spirits in the Tar Heel state only go back about ten years, making liquor in North Carolina is not new. Wilkes County, which was once dubbed the “Moonshine Capital of the World,” was the leading producer of illegal liquor for decades. In 1965, Tom Wolfe’s article in Esquire—“The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!”—made the area nationally famous. Today descendants of famous moonshiners are now respectable craft distillers carrying on the family tradition—people like Brian Call, the master distiller at Call Family Distillers, who is descended from Reverend Daniel Call, who sold his still seven generations ago to burgeoning entrepreneur Jack Daniels. Brian is the son of the legendary Willie Clay “The Uncatchable” Call, who hung around with Junior Johnson and whose favorite car—a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker fitted with toggle switches that kill the brake lights, is on display at the distillery today. Today, the Calls make a 101-proof sour mash moonshine as well as strawberry, cherry, and apple pie varieties. In Still & Barrel, Trump traces the history of manufacturing moonshine whiskey, gin, vodka, and rum in the state all the way to today’s boom from the artisan movement. The book also serves as a guide so you can visit the almost 50 distilleries that are now in business. The state’s distillers are not just making moonshine. Their wares include rum—from sorghum and molasses—aged red-wheat organic whiskey and vodka infused with the mysterious Tobago pepper. The information about the distillers and their products is surrounded by history and compelling stories about people and their passion. A lifelong newspaper reporter & editor in NC, Trump received an MFA in narrative nonfiction from Goucher College. His thesis, which told the stories and profiles of North Carolina’s craft distilleries, evolved into a regular Huffington Post/i> blog focused on the subject. That blog was the impetus for Still & Barrel.

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De massa call me and tell me, "Woman, I’s pay big money for you, and I’s done dat 'cause I wants you to raise me chillum. I’s put you to live with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn’t want whippin’ at de stake, you do what I wants." I thinks ‘bout Massa buyin’ me off de block and savin’ me from bein’ separated from my folks, and ‘bout bein’ whipped at de stake. Dere it am. What am I to do? So asks Rose Williams of Bell County, Texas, whose long-ago forced cohabitation remains as bitter at age 90 as when she was “just a ingnoramus chile” of 16. In all her years after freedom, she never had any desire to marry. Firsthand accounts of female slaves are few. The best-known narratives of slavery are those of Frederick Douglass and other men. Even the photos most people have seen are of male slaves chained and beaten. What we know of the lives of female slaves comes mainly from the fiction of authors like Toni Morrison and movies like Gone With the Wind. Far More Terrible for Women seeks to broaden the discussion by presenting 27 narratives of female ex-slaves. Editor Patrick Minges combed the WPA interviews of the 1930s for those of women, selecting a range of stories that give a taste of the unique challenges, complexities, and cruelties that were the lot of females under the “peculiar institution.” Patrick Minges worked for 17 years for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. He teaches in Stokes County Schools and at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem. He is also the author of Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855-1867 and Black Indian Slave Narratives.

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Half a century after the publication of The Lonely Doll, Dare Wright remains a subject of fascination. A strikingly attractive woman-child—a model and fashion photographer who always saw the world through the eyes of a girl—she was the author of nineteen children’s books that are still remembered fondly by a legion of fans. Ocracoke in the Fifties, now in print for the first time, is Dare Wright’s only book for adults. First and foremost, it is a tribute to one of Dare’s favorite places. It is also a time capsule of a unique island culture just past the midpoint of the twentieth century. And surprisingly, it is a testament to the timelessness of Ocracoke—which would please Dare immensely. Ocracoke has seen its share of changes, to be sure, but readers will have no trouble recognizing the durable little island off the North Carolina coast. The Ocracoke Lighthouse, the British Cemetery, the pony herd, the white picket fences, the legend of Blackbeard, the weathered fishermen, the barefoot children—seldom have Ocracoke’s landmarks, legends, and people been portrayed so memorably as by Dare Wright’s camera and pen. Dare Wright died in 2001. Ocracoke in the Fifties will bring a twinge of nostalgia to those who loved her children’s books and introduce her to a new generation of readers. Dare Wright (1914–2001) was born in Canada on December 3, 1914. Her parents' marriage dissolved before Dare turned three, and Dare's father left with her older brother, Blaine. The children were not to reunite until they were in their twenties. Dare grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and showed an early creative aptitude. Encouraged by her mother, the artist Edith Stevenson Wright, Dare learned to sketch, paint, write, and sew. It took the catalyst of photography for Dare to later combine these talents into her Lonely Doll book series. Moving to New York in her twenties, Dare modeled for major magazines and had small parts in theatrical productions. A stunning beauty, Dare seemed a natural for show business, but she was never comfortable performing in a public venue. Competition, whether with other actresses for roles, or with her mother as a painter, was too distressing. Instead, Dare found her niche as a photographer, first in the fashion field, and then as a children's book author. In 1941, Dare and her brother Blaine met for the first time since they had been separated as children. Blaine was handsome, witty, and everything Dare could have wished for in a sibling. Blaine introduced Dare to his RAF friend, Philip Sandeman. The two became engaged, but the wedding never transpired. The 1957 success of Dare's first book, The Lonely Doll, brought her recognition as both an author and photographer. Illustrated with Dare's haunting black-and-white photographs, the seemingly simple text touched both children and their parents. Almost fifty years later, Dare's nineteen published books continue to delight a new generation of readers.

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Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown comprise Virginia's historic triangle. Some of the most important chapters of America's history unfolded in these settlements. The region has been the scene of violent confrontations between settlers and the original natives, an emotional struggle for independence, a bitter civil war, and, most recently, a transformation into one of the country's finest examples of historic restoration. Some parapsychologists believe that spirits can be awakened by a sudden flurry of activity. With so much activity occurring throughout the area's history, it is little wonder that there are so many documented sightings of ghosts in this triangle. In this book, Jackie Behrend brings together thirty-seven of the region's most intriguing spirits. From Williamsburg come tales about the Wagon of Death, which can still be heard rolling down Nicholson Street as it brings prisoners to the gallows; the colonial celebrations that continue at the Raleigh Tavern; the residential area where all is quiet except for the ghosts still fighting the Revolutionary War; and the ongoing wedding that brings men form both sides of the Civil War together. From Yorktown come stories about the sounds that emanate from the cave where Lord Cornwallis hid during the town's siege during 1781; the mournful tune that is heard on Surrender Field; and the melancholy feeling that overcomes people retracing the path where slaves were once marched. From Jamestown comes the tale of a deserted lover's angry ghost who still haunts the banks of the James River. From Carter's Grove comes the story of a slave who still searches Old Country Road for his lost family. Just as you can step back in time by visiting the restored settlements of the historic triangle, you can now revisit the past through the stories about the ghostly spirits who haunt Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. When Hauntings of Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown was written, Jackie Eileen Behrend was the owner of J.B. Tours, which offered guided tours of the historic Triangle. Her most popular tour, “The Haunted Williamsburg Tour”, was conducted by lantern light and featured many of the stories in this book. Jackie later moved to Ocean City, Maryland, where she led tours of Ocean City and Berlin. She now lives in Pensacola, Florida.

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In the 1930s, the Federal Writers’ Project undertook a massive effort at gathering the oral testimony of former slaves. Those ex-slaves were in their declining years by the time of the Great Depression, but Elizabeth Sparks, Elige Davison, and others like them nonetheless provided a priceless record of life under the yoke: where slaves lived, how they were treated, what they ate, how they worked, how they adjusted to freedom. Here, Belinda Hurmence presents the interviews of 21 former Virginia slaves. This is a companion volume to Hurmence’s popular collections of North Carolina and South Carolina slave narratives, My Folks Don’t Want Me to Talk About Slavery and Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember. Belinda Hurmence was born in Oklahoma, raised in Texas, and educated at the University of Texas and Columbia University. She has written several novels for young people, including Tough Tiffany (an ALA Notable Book), A Girl Called Boy (winner of the Parents' Choice Award), Tancy (winner of a Golden Kite Award), and The Nightwalker. She now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Ironclads and Columbiads recounts the exciting battles and events that shook the coast of North Carolina during America's bloodiest war. Throughout the Civil War, North Carolina's coast was of great strategic importance to the Confederacy. Its well-protected coastline offered a perfect refuge for privateers who sallied forth and captured so many Union merchant vessels in the early days of the war that maritime insurance companies in the North went into a panic, forcing the government to mount an expedition against Cape Hatteras. North Carolina's coastal counties and the state's coastal railroad system were vital to the feeding and resupply of Robert E. Lee's army. And even after the tightening blockade and powerful Federal assaults closed off the ports of Charleston, New Orleans, and Mobile, Wilmington continued to provide a haven for blockade runners. That city eventually became the most strategically important location in the entire Confederacy. To subdue Fort Fisher, which stoutly defended Wilmington, the Union was forced to assemble what was then the largest naval and amphibious landing force in American history. William R. (Bill) Trotter is an essayist, book reviewer, and author of The Civil War in North Carolina and A Frozen Hell, among other books, as well as several short stories and novellas, and has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. He wrote a monthly column called "The Desktop General" for PC Gamer magazine until 2004. He was the first recipient of the North Carolina English Teachers' Association "Lifetime Achievement Award." He lives in Greensboro, NC.

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A longtime coast watcher tells the story of the beautiful and ever-changing coast of North Carolina—rich in culture, history, and landscape—with words and photographs. This gorgeous, richly illustrated book for visitors and residents alike details the charms and controversies of the “banks” of North Carolina. Hatcher highlights the current wonders of the famous coast, as well as an intriguing history that includes the familiar Outer Banks legendary Wright Brothers flight, the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and the picturesque lighthouses, as well as the lesser known Chitlin’ Circuit beach resort, a 1898 coup d’etat, and a controversial sea bird. Told with an ear for the native language and local lore, with a taste for the water and its riches, and above all, with an eye toward the preservation of a vanishing environment and culture, this will be the go-to book for readers who want an overview of the North Carolina coastal region.

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A young girl grows up in a family uprooted by the terror of an Islamic Revolution, where her culture, her gender, and her education are in peril.For the curious and imaginative Moji, there is no better place to grow up than the lush garden of her grandparents in Tehran. However, as she sits with her sister underneath the grapevines, listening to their grandfather recount the enchanting stories of One Thousand and One Nights, revolution is brewing in her homeland. Soon, the last monarch of Iran will leave the country, and her home and her family will never be the same.From Moji’s house on Sun Street, readers experience the 1979 Iranian revolution through the eyes of a young girl and her family members during a time of concussive political and social change. Moji must endure the harrowing first days of the violent revolution, a fraught passage to the US where there is only hostility from her classmates during the Iranian hostage crisis, her father’s detainment by the Islamic Revolutionary Army, and finally, the massive change in the status of women in post-revolution Iran. Along with these seismic shifts, for Moji, there are also the universal perils of love, sexuality, and adolescence. However, since Moji’s school is centered on political indoctrination, even a young girl’s innocent crush can mean catastrophe. Is Moji able to pull through? Will her family come to her rescue? And just like Scheherazade, will the power of stories help her prevail?

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Winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award for poetryWinner of the Wren Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limón, Caitlin Scarano’s collection wrestles with family violence, escaping home, unraveling relationships, and the complexity of sexuality. The Necessity of Wildfire begins, “To not harm / each other is not enough. I want to love you / so much that you have no before.” These poems chase a singular, thorny question: how does where and who we came from shape who and how we love? Judge Ada Limón says the resulting collection is “hungry, clear-eyed, tough, and generous.”Scarano’s imagination is galvanized by the South where she grew up and by the Pacific Northwest where she now resides—floods and wildfires, the Salish Sea and the North Cascades, and the humans and animals whose lives intersect and collide there. In this collection, Scarano reckons with a legacy of violence on both sides of their family, the death of their estranged father, the unraveling of long-term relationships, the complexity of their sexuality, and the decision not to have children. With fierce lyricality, these poems—“stories without monsters, / stories without morals”—resist both redemption and blame, yet call in mercy.

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“Kim Powers's haunting and spellbinding novel Rules for Being Dead reads like an intoxicating blend of the best of Shirley Jackson, Alice Sebold and Fannie Flagg." —STARRED Review, Shelf Awareness It's the late 1960s in McKinney, Texas. At the downtown theater and the local drive-in, movies—James Bond, My Fair Lady, Alfie, and Dr. Zhivago—feed the dreams and obsessions of a ten-year-old Clarke who loves Audrey, Elvis, his family, and the handsome boy in the projector booth. Then Clarke loses his beloved mother, and no one will tell him how she died. No one will tell her either. She is floating above the trees and movie screens of McKinney, trapped between life and death, searching for a glimpse of her final moments on this earth. Clarke must find the shattering truth, which haunts this darkly humorous and incredibly moving novel.

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A documentary-style collection of stories, poems, essays, and interviews by Southeastern Native American women.Upon Her Shoulders is a collection of stories, poems, and prose by Southeastern Native American women whose narratives attest to the hard work and activism required to keep their communities well and safe. This collection highlights Native female voices in the Southeast, a region and its peoples rarely covered in other publications.The editors have deep roots in the scholarship and culture of Native women. Featured prominently is the Lumbee community, where two of the editors (members of the Lumbee tribe themselves) teach at the nearby University of North Carolina at Pembroke, a center for scholarship about the Lumbee people.This volume honors the Native American tradition of passing on knowledge through stories and oral histories. With contributions by both professional and everyday writers, the collection spotlights these societies that have raised girls from an early age to be independent and competent leaders, to access traditional Native spirituality despite religious oppression, and to fight for justice for themselves and other Native people across the nation in the face of legal and societal oppression.

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Across the Blue Ridge Mountains stretches a world both charming and complicated. Jeremy Jones and his wife move into a small house above the creek where his family had settled 200 years prior. He takes a job alongside his former teachers in the local elementary school and sets out on a search to understand how this ancient land has shaped its people—how it shaped him. His search sends him burrowing in the past—hunting buried treasure and POW camps, unearthing Civil War graves and family feuds, exploring gated communities and tourist traps, encountering changed accents and immigrant populations, tracing both Walmart sidewalks and carved-out mountains—and pondering the future. He meshes narrative and myth, geology and genealogy, fiddle tunes and local color in his exploration of the briskly changing and oft-stigmatized world of his native southern Appalachians and particularly the mystical Bearwallow Mountain, a peak suddenly in flux.

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“Kim Powers's haunting and spellbinding novel Rules for Being Dead reads like an intoxicating blend of the best of Shirley Jackson, Alice Sebold and Fannie Flagg." —STARRED Review, Shelf Awareness It's the late 1960s in McKinney, Texas. At the downtown theater and the local drive-in, movies—James Bond, My Fair Lady, Alfie, and Dr. Zhivago—feed the dreams and obsessions of a ten-year-old Clarke who loves Audrey, Elvis, his family, and the handsome boy in the projector booth. Then Clarke loses his beloved mother, and no one will tell him how she died. No one will tell her either. She is floating above the trees and movie screens of McKinney, trapped between life and death, searching for a glimpse of her final moments on this earth. Clarke must find the shattering truth, which haunts this darkly humorous and incredibly moving novel.

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The Gullah culture, though borne of isolation and slavery, thrived on the US East Coast sea islands from pre-Civil War times until today, and nowhere more prominently than on Hilton Head Island, SC. On this small barrier island descendants of the first generations of Gullah people continue to preserve Gullah language, customs, arts, and cuisine. The three authors of Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge 1861-1956 are among those descendants, and in this book, they chronicle the amazing history of their secluded community from the Civil War through the 1950s, when real estate development connected Hilton Head Island to the mainland with a bridge. The history of these Gullah islanders, little celebrated until now, is an amazing American story. Hilton Head Island was one of the first areas liberated by Union troops after Fort Sumter. With plantation owners absent, the society of formerly enslaved Gullah people embarked on the activities of freedom: enlisting in fighting for the Union army; creating the first black-governed community in the South, complete with a police force; and, when formal emancipation arrived, running for office, campaigning, and voting. This book illustrates in vivid detail the story of that vibrant post-Civil War era and the tangled perils of Reconstruction that followed, along with all of the progress and setbacks of African Americans in the South over 150 years via the lives of Gullah Hilton Head Islanders. Authors rely on the historical records and amazing first-person accounts they have gathered from their relatives and other community members to tell this riveting story.

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In 1963, Judge Charles Whedbee was asked to substitute on a Greenville, NC, morning show called Carolina Today while one of the program's regulars was in the hospital. Whedbee took the opportunity to tell some of the Outer Banks stories he'd heard during his many summers at Nags Head. The station received such a volume of mail in praise of his tale-telling that he was invited to remain even after the man he was substituting for returned to the air. "He had a way of telling a story that really captured me," said one of the program's co-hosts. "Whether he was talking about a sunset, a ghost, or a shipwreck, I was there, living every minute of it." Word traveled as far as Winston-Salem, where John F. Blair proposed to Whedbee that he compile his stories in book form. Whedbee welcomed the challenge, though his expectations for the manuscript that became Legends of the Outer Banks and Tar Heel Tidewater were modest. "I wrote it out of a love for this region and the people whom I'd known all my life," he said. "I didn't think it would sell a hundred copies." From the very first sentence of the foreword, Whedbee stamped the collection with his inimitable style: "You are handed herewith a small pod or school of legends about various portions of that magical region known as the Outer Banks of North Carolina as well as stories from other sections of the broad bays, sounds, and estuaries that make up tidewater Tarheelia." The Lost Colony, Indians, Blackbeard, an albino porpoise that guided ships into harbor—the tales in that volume form the core of Outer Banks folklore. Whedbee liked to tell people that his stories were of three kinds: those he knew to be true, those he believed to be true, and those he fabricated. But despite much prodding, he never revealed which were which. Legends of the Outer Banks went through three printings in 1966, its first year. Demand for Whedbee's tales and the author's supply of good material were such that further volumes were inevitable. The Flaming Ship of Ocracoke & Other Tales of the Outer Banks was published in 1971, Outer Banks Mysteries & Seaside Stories in 1978, Outer Banks Tales to Remember in 1985, and Blackbeard's Cup and Stories of the Outer Banks in 1989. In 2004, the staff of John F. Blair, Publisher, collected 13 of Judge Whedbee's finest stories for Pirates, Ghosts, and Coastal Lore. If this is your introduction to Charles Harry Whedbee, you'll soon understand his love for the people and the history of the Outer Banks. For decades, the folk tales of Charles Harry Whedbee have been available wherever you care to look on the Outer Banks. Their popularity has transcended Whedbee's loyal readership among North Carolinians and visitors from the Northeast and the Midwest. Charles Harry Whedbee was an elected judge in his native Greenville, North Carolina, for thirty-plus years, but his favorite place was the Outer Banks, Nags Head in particular. Whedbee was the author of five folklore collections. He died in 1990.

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Straight from the roux bayou, a culinary memoir about how a centuries old Cajun and Creole secret―gumbo―has become one of the world’s most beloved dishes.The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans―all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many, in America and around the world? A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, where his French-speaking mother’s gumbo often got started with a chicken chased down in the yard. In Gumbo Life: A Journey Down the Roux Bayou, Wells shares his lifelong quest to explore gumbo’s roots and mysteries. He spends time with octogenarian chefs to make a gourmet gumbo; joins a team at

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Seaside Spectres collects ghost stories from the coastal region of North Carolina as part of the Haunted North Carolina series. This book includes stories told around beach campfires, in grandma’s attic, and on nighttime drives to the coast. There are thirty-three stories in all, one for each coastal county, including tales of ghosts, witches, demons, spook lights, unidentified flying objects, unexplained phenomena, and more. In “The Cursed Town,” an eighteenth-century preacher curses the town of Bath—a curse from which the town never recovered. “Terrors of the Swamp” details the unexplained happenings in the Great Dismal Swamp—mysterious lights, a haunting from the American Revolution, and a creature called the Dismal Swamp Freak. In “The Fraternity of Death,” readers meet the nineteenth-century cult whose members mocked the Last Supper and died under mysterious circumstances soon afterward, inspiring a story by Robert Louis Stephenson. Seaside Spectres contains a new foreword by Scott Mason, WRAL’s "Tar Heel Traveler" and author of three North Carolina guidebooks. Other books in the Haunted North Carolina series feature tales of the mountains, Haints of the Hills, and tales of the state’s central region, Piedmont Phantoms.

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Little Turkle hatches into a world full of wonder on a barrier island off the Atlantic Coast where some people call turtles "turkles." He must journey from his nest in the warm beach sand to the cool, foaming waters of the ocean. When Little Turkle runs into trouble, a special friend helps him on his way to the waves.

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"Holding On To Nothing is a resonant song of the South, all whiskey, bluegrass, Dolly Parton, tobacco fields, and women who know better but still fall for the lowdown men whom they know will disappoint them." —Lauren Groff, National Book Award finalist author of Fates and Furies and Florida Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than bluegrass music, tobacco fields, and a Walmart full of beer and firearms for the hunting season. Their path is harrowing, but Lucy and Jeptha are characters to love, and readers will root for their success in a novel so riveting that no one will want to turn out the light until they know whether this family will survive. In luminous prose, debut novelist Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne brings us a present-day Appalachian story in the tradition of Lee Smith, Silas House, and Ron Rash, cast without sentiment or cliché, but with a genuine and profound understanding of the place and its people.

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From Blackbeard's den at Ocracoke, to the Hills of the Seven Sisters at Nags Head, to the misty swamps of Shallote, there is hardly an inch of territory along North Carolina's coast without a legend attached to it. Inlanders may be skeptical regarding the sometimes miraculous, often horror-filled tales that make up coastal folklore, but Outer Bankers accept the incredible as fact. But this book is more than a collection of coastal legends. It is an affectionate portrait of the people who daily pull a living out of the treacherous waters of the Atlantic . . . a tribute to the hardiness and courage that have made the Banker a rare breed . . . a breed whose true stories are, indeed, stranger than fiction. For decades, the folk tales of Charles Harry Whedbee have been available wherever you care to look on the Outer Banks. Their popularity has transcended Whedbee's loyal readership among North Carolinians and visitors from the Northeast and the Midwest. Charles Harry Whedbee was an elected judge in his native Greenville, North Carolina, for thirty-plus years, but his favorite place was the Outer Banks, Nags Head in particular. Whedbee was the author of five folklore collections. He died in 1990.

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