Arts

Journalist Susan Spencer-Wendel was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease in 2011. In her new memoir, Until I Say Good-Bye, she describes a year spent living with the disease but devoted to joy: traveling, visiting friends and family, and accepting her fate with grace.

There are three reasons to see this prequel to the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz: the trio of witches played by Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams. But James Franco, who stars as the wizard-in-the-making, disappoints — and the film as a whole is a bit snoozy.

The Darnell Woodies

How do you define the music of The Darnell Woodies? Is it bluegrass, punk, rock, jazz, blues? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you've got at least an entrée into the unique sound that is Darnell Woodies: fiddler Bryan Gallimore, guitarist, singer/songwriter Matt Smith, Brad Cokendolpher on banjo, mandolin, etc., William vonReichbauer is the bassist, and on drums, the Rev. Doug Hawkins. They visited WFDD in July of 2012 to kick off the official release of their CD Dancing on Your Grave. The official party took place at the Winston-Salem venue The Garage, but the official pre-party took place Live in Studio A. 

As J. Edgar Hoover became increasingly worried about communist threats against America, he instructed the bureau to conduct secret intelligence operations against anyone deemed "subversive." Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner is now out in paperback.

The legendary music that makes up Broadway's upcoming Motown: The Musical offers audible proof that Berry Gordy's Detroit R&B label is the soundtrack of an American generation. But for Gordy, the new project is just the story of that label as he lived through it.

  The Sawtooth School has been the premier community visual art school in the Piedmont Triad for nearly 70 years, and they provide education in just about every artistic discipline imaginable for all ages from beginners to those with advanced skills. 

The legendary American playwright's words and characters are central to a national monologue contest that gives high school students a chance to discover themselves in the stories of his Century Cycle.

In a new memoir, the Major League Baseball catcher opens up about getting drafted in the 62nd round, his feud with Roger Clemens and what it's like to go into retirement. Leaving the game, he says, was "like a small death."

In the French fable "Stone Soup", three starving, weary soldiers trick a group of villagers into adding their own vegetables to the soldier's pot of boiling water and “magic” stones. Replace the soldiers with a group of hungry musicians and you get the delightful musical of In the Soup.

In Mohsin Hamid's fictional how-to, a nameless protagonist makes a fortune selling knockoff bottled water in a thirsty Asian metropolis. Hamid joins NPR's Steve Inkeep to discuss the book's conceit and the side effects of rampant development.