Which big-time bandleader and North Carolina native broke all sorts of attendance records, appeared in nearly a dozen movies, and became the top moneymaker in his field - all without learning to play a musical instrument? If you don't say Kay Kyser, the "Old Perfesser" - that's right, you're wrong!

... Percy reveals himself a kind of "post-modern" Da Vinci, but using the American South as his canvas and drawing board rather than Renaissance Italy. Sketching human drama, faithful to the tragic and comedic alike, with the best of human thought and art behind it...

The University of North Carolina Press joins the UNC Office of Information Technology in publishing the Internet Poetry Archive. The archive makes available over a worldwide computer network selected poems from a number of contemporary poets. The goal of the project is to make poetry accessible to new audiences (at little or no cost) and to give teachers and students of poetry new ways of presenting and studying these poets and their texts.

The archive includes the work of living poets from around the world. The initial unit features seven poets, including Philip Levine and Nobel Prize winners Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz. Using the capabilities of the Internet to present sound and graphics as well as text, the archive entry for each poet comprises audio clips of the poet reading several poems, the poet's comments on the works, a photograph of the poet and any other graphics that would help a reader understand the poem (e.g., a map or illustration of a particular place mentioned in the poem), texts of the poems, a critical biography of the poet prepared by a scholar familiar with the poet's work, and a short bibliography.

Author Paul Green (1894-1981) was one of the South's most revered writers, and one of America's most distinguished. The first playwright from the South to gain national and international recognition, he was part of that remarkable generation of writers who first brought southern writing to the attention of the world. His best known achievements were as a playwright, but he is most renowned as a writer both from the South, as well as a writer of dramatic material about the South. Equal to his literary influence has been his influence on human rights in the South and internationally.

Watch and listen to many more interesting people on our Speaker Series page. The following are audio and video materials we have collected during past visits from guests and panel discussions focusing on technology, economy, government, and culture.

Read and listen to the stories of 18th and 19th African-American authors including Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Omar ibn Said, and George Moses Horton.