Lindsay Foster Thomas

The National Black Theatre Festival is a longstanding tradition in Winston-Salem. Founded in 1989 by North Carolina native Larry Leon Hamlin, the biennial celebration of African-American stage performance draws thousands of people to the Triad.

Writer and musician Shirlette Ammons is not afraid of intimacy. Her poems and songs are like diary pages that she invites audiences to flip through at their leisure. Ammons is used to sharing her personal space. She grew up in a rural country home with a twin sister and dozens of cousins. After she left home for college, she started to explore her race and sexuality and used the power of the pen to document her self-discovery.

Classic rock meets classical music as the North Carolina Symphony takes on the music of iconic British band Queen. In “The Music of Queen,” hits like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Somebody to Love” and “We Will Rock You” have been arranged for a symphony orchestra by guest conductor Brent Havens.

Nearly 55 million Americans live in communities that are governed by homeowners associations, or HOAs. In exchange for dues, residents have access to neighborhood amenities like pools, parks and club houses. But more and more, HOAs are responsible for providing services and maintenance once offered by city and municipal governments – like trash pick-up and sewage system repairs.

Musician John Darnielle got his start by recording tunes on a boombox in the early 1990s. To his surprise, folks went crazy for his lo-fi sound and his band, The Mountain Goats, quickly formed a huge cult following that spans the globe. The band’s 7th album, “All Eternals Deck,” was recently released on Merge Records. For it, Darnielle abandoned the nostalgic vibe that initially earned him critical acclaim and turned to horror flicks from the 1970s for inspiration.

After volunteering as a high school teacher in the slums of Jamaica and serving the people of Nigeria during a devastating civil war, Jock Brandis found himself mentally exhausted and disillusioned. He left the service life for work in the film industry, a career move that took him to Wilmington, N.C. But a colleague persuaded Brandis to return to Africa, where he met a group of women peanut shellers in Mali. He wound up inventing a peanut shelling machine – the Universal Nut Sheller – to help them with their work.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of being labeled an “African-American artist”? That question is at the heart of a new exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art. It features the works of 31 contemporary artists - photography, video, sculpture and more – with each piece revealing a bit about the experience of blacks in America. Host Frank Stasio discusses the “30 Americans” exhibit with Durham photographer Titus Brooks Heagins and Richard Powell, the John Spencer Bassett professor of art and art history at Duke University.

Of the 600 million people who know how to play chess worldwide, Phiona Mutesi is one of the best. The 14-year-old Ugandan phenom recently competed in the Chess Olympiad, an international tournament that pits players against each other in strategic competition. A short time ago, Mutesi had never even heard of the game. Her life was consumed with finding food for her family and avoiding trouble in the crime-ridden slum she calls home. But chess is opening new doors for Mutesi, whose story is being documented by Chapel Hill sports writer Tim Crothers.

The word “cult” comes from a Latin root word that translates into “ritual.” But in the modern era, the word has acquired derogatory connotations – used to describe spiritual, political or social groups that challenge conventional beliefs. In North Carolina, seven people have been charged in the death of a woman with connections to a Durham congregation that has been characterized as a cult. Could use of that word in the news coverage of the case influence its outcome?

Not many baseball players can also say they’ve written a New York Times bestseller. Pitcher Dirk Hayhurst can. When first he picked up a pen to write a memoir about life in the bullpen, he never expected that he would become a critically acclaimed author. Readers ate up Hayhurst’s honesty about success, failure and the often strange culture of sports as documented in “The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran” (Citadel Press/2010).