Our State features the best writers in North Carolina. So choosing just ten stories to list as our favorites was a difficult task.
The stories below are listed in no particular order, and is not a ranking. Do you have a favorite story we didn’t mention? Tell us in the comment section below.
September 2011
When he was a boy growing up in Sugar Grove, Robert Dotson took up flatfooting. Now 88, he still lives in the same High Country community, and he’s the master of an art form that requires his feet stay close to the ground. Read the full story. Meet Robert Dotson and see him perform in this exclusive video.
July 2012
As an infant growing up in Watauga County, Arthel Lane Watson lost his sight. As a teenager, he picked up a guitar and created a sound. Now, that sound and that guitar and that blind man are forever linked in one name that will live as long as music is played: Doc. Read the full story. Watch writer Philip Gerard play his favorite Doc Watson tune.
August 2012
On October 15, 1954, a terrible storm makes for a terrible day for the entire country. One county in rural southeastern North Carolina takes the most direct hit, with lives and communities shattered under the storm clouds. Read the full story.
March 2004
Herschel Brown constructs buildings and delivers quality — and now he also builds one-string instruments and delivers happiness. Read the full story.
January 1997
It would have been easy for Billy Arthur to look around and see the differences between himself and others when he was growing up in Charlotte. Upon seeing that his friends were growing taller and that he would be left topping the measuring stick at 39 1/2 inches, it would have been so easy for this unlikely source of inspiration to perhaps settle for a little less in life. Read the full story.
December 2012
An original fiction story by Clyde Edgerton for Our State‘s December 2012 issue. Read the full story.
December 2004
With a name like Nick, this Down East businessman may have been destined to invent a new kind of Christmas tree. Plus when it comes to holiday traditions, the folks of Down East Carteret County take a back seat to no one. Read the full story.
March 2010
Every time he straps on a headset, Woody Durham imagines speaking to just one person — you. Read the full story.
March 2012
Never in my house was it, “Let’s go for a ride.” Always — and impromptu, although ever-anticipated on those steamy, buggy late-summer nights or languorous Sunday afternoons of my youth — my father said, when he was ready to ramble about town and through countryside, “Let’s go to ride.” Read the full story.
February 2013
In a town where everyone seems to have big ideas, the success of a local currency shows the value in working together to make them happen. Read the full story.
North Carolina is known for many things, but nothing more important this week than the qualities of endurance, resilience, and hope.
By day, this adventure park in the Triad is a fall festival to die for. By night, the undead come alive for Halloween tricks. Welcome to one man’s vision of year-round merrymaking.
North Carolina’s border dances across the mountains as it traces four different states. Life here can be more remote, but good neighbors are never far away.
The Blue Ridge Parkway stands out among America’s national parks: Unfurling across six Appalachian mountain chains, it connects dozens of rural communities and binds together generations of families through shared memories.
