Monthly Archives: September 2025

The Making of Carla Harrison’s Debut Novel

September 27, 2025 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Carla Harrison describes herself as a “Southern writer” and for good reason. She is a native of North Carolina, and her family has deep roots in the world of tobacco farming, which played such a big role in the history of the eastern part of the state. Carla has been living in Charlotte for twenty years, but she has never forgotten the stories that her relatives told about life on the family’s tobacco farm. When Carla decided to try her hand at writing a coming-of-age novel, she turned to these family stories for inspiration. The result is a work of historical fiction set on a North Carolina tobacco farm in the mid-1960s. Titled Heart of the Green Leaf, this novel was officially released on September 23, 2025.

I contacted Carla and asked her for more information about how she came to write Heart of the Green Leaf.  Here is what she sent to me:

When both of my children left home in the same fall—one for college and the other for an arts boarding school, I suddenly found myself with an empty house and an unfamiliar stretch of quiet. After nearly two decades as a stay-at-home mom, it was an unexpected turning point. For the first time in years, I had space to ask: who was I beyond being a mother?

I’d always loved writing, mostly poetry, but it had been years since I’d nurtured that creative spirit. As I settled into a rhythm, I began writing again—this time about a girl who lived on a farm much like my grandmother’s in North Carolina. I imagined the land in earlier days, when it was full of life, in the days of a working tobacco farm, as my father often recalled. That’s when Maralee appeared…first in a poem, but she kept demanding more. Soon she had a family, and their voices carried me from poetry into prose.

As the story grew, I realized I needed community and guidance. My husband pointed me to Charlotte Lit, where I first took a few classes and then joined their Authors Lab program. Working with that community made me realize that this small story I was writing could truly grow into a novel. With their mentorship and encouragement, I was able to shape Heart of the Green Leaf into the book it is today.

Charlotte has been home to my family for over twenty years. We’ve always been drawn to the city’s vibrant arts community, from the ballet and symphony to local theaters and dance studios. Watching our children grow as young artists within this community deepened our own ties to Charlotte and gave us an even greater appreciation for the creativity that thrives here.

In many ways, writing Heart of the Green Leaf grew out of my own search for identity and belonging, and I’m honored to share it now with the very community that helped me find my voice.

Heart of the Green Leaf is a coming-of-age novel set in the summer of 1964 on a North Carolina tobacco farm. At fourteen, Maralee Truett is caught between the struggles of her family, the weight of mental health challenges, and a world on the brink of change. As she learns to trust her own voice and talents, she begins to uncover who she is and who she hopes to become. At its core, the novel is about resilience, love, and the timeless search for identity—a story I hope will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to find their place in the world.

I also wanted to share my website www.CarlaHarrison.com where readers can find more information about the book, my background, and how to order the book or get in touch with me. In addition, I’ll be participating in a virtual book launch on Sunday, October 5th, and would love for your readers to know about it.

Carla Harrison, Writer

I congratulate Carla on the publication of Heart of the Green Leaf. As Carla points out in the writeup that she sent to me, this is a story about a character who is trying to find her place in the world. In a sense, Carla has also been trying to find her place as a Southern writer, and she has succeeded. For Carla, that place is the supportive writing community that I call Storied Charlotte.  

Tags: Carla HarrisonComing-of-Age Novel

Philip L. Dubois on His Years as the Chancellor of UNC Charlotte 

September 21, 2025 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

September 23, 1946, marked the official launch of the Charlotte Center of the University of North Carolina, which eventually became the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In commemoration of this important date in its history, UNC Charlotte has designated September 23rd as Founders Day.  

With Founders Day upon us, now is a fitting time to reflect on the latest book about the history of UNC Charlotte. Titled Details Matter: UNC Charlotte, 2005-2020, this book was co-written by Philip L. Dubois, who served as the chancellor of UNC Charlotte from 2005 to 2020, and William Thomas Jeffers, who was hired in 2016 as UNC Charlotte’s first public historian.

Details Matter UNC Charlotte 2005-2020 by Philip L. Dubois Local History College - Picture 1 of 8

Details Matter joins four other books that deal with the history of UNC Charlotte. The first book on this topic was Ken Sanford’s Growing Up Together: Charlotte and UNC Charlotte, which was published in 1996. Next came Marian Ellis’ Dean W. Colvard: Quiet Leader (2004). The next two were both by Jeffers—The Making of a Research University: James H. Woodward  and UNC Charlotte, 1989-2005 (2016) and Jewel in the Crown: Bonnie Cone and the Founding of UNC Charlotte (2021). 

One of the ways in which Details Matter differs from the other books about the history of UNC Charlotte is that it reflects the direct experiences and insights of a former chancellor.  The years that are covered in the book are the very years that Dubois served as the leader of the university, and Dubois draws extensively on this unique background when writing about the history of the university. 

As the title of the book suggests, Dubois is a stickler for details.  In fact, the phrase “details matter” is emblazoned on his favorite coffee cup. Given his interest in details, it is not surprising that the book is brimming with detailed information about the major decisions that shaped the university during a critical time in its history.  

I recently contacted Dubois and asked him for more information about this book.  Here is what he sent to me:

I had always valued Ken Sanford’s book about the early history of what became UNC Charlotte and its maturation through the early years of the administration of Jim Woodward.  Once I became Chancellor (in 2005), I commissioned a book about the entirety of the Woodward years from 1989 to 2005 and our development as a research institution.  That volume was written by a former graduate of our public history master’s program, Bill Jeffers.  

Once that book was completed,  I asked Jeffers to begin to assemble materials on my chancellorship that could possibly be used for a book if someone should wish to write it and thereby ensure a continuous account of the development of UNC Charlotte from the beginning.   Although I anticipated that Jeffers would probably author that book,  the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic gave me the perfect excuse to take the lead.  Not only did I have the time, but I also had access to documents that would not ordinarily work their way into an institutional history, including the 175,000 emails that I had sent during my administration from 2005 to 2020.   

Although the book is quite lengthy and could serve double duty as a doorstop, I hope the details provided can give readers some insight into how difficult and complicated decisions that have shaped the institution to this day came to pass. There are a few chapters in there that may be the only definitive accounts that exist on things like the founding of football, light rail, and the April 30, 2019 shootings. 

While reading Details Matter, I was reminded of my favorite song from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton.  The song is titled “The Room Where It Happens.” The character based on Aaron Burr voices the song, and it reflects Burr’s desire to be present when and where important decisions are being made.  I think that we can all relate to Burr’s desire to be in the room where it happens.  In Details Matter, Dubois provides readers with a sense of being in that room when it comes to the decision-making related to the development of UNC Charlotte.

Details Matter: UNC Charlotte, 2005-2020 speaks to everyone in Storied Charlotte who has connections to UNC Charlotte or who has an interest in the recent history of the university. 

Tags: Philip DuboisWilliam Thomas Jeffers

Former Charlotte Writer Robin Hemley on How to Change History

September 13, 2025 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

My friend Robin Hemley has a long association with Charlotte. Robin served as a creative writing professor at UNC Charlotte from 1987 to 1994.  In the years since he left Charlotte, Robin has taught at universities all over the world, including a six-year stint as the director of the Writing Program at Yale-NUS in Singapore. However, he occasionally returns to Charlotte to give readings and to teach writing classes.

Charlotte Lit is bringing Robin back to Charlotte on September 26, 2025, to lead a master class titled “The Imagined Object: Memory and Imagination” and to give a faculty talk with Judy Goldman on “Stitching Together Your Memoir.” Robin’s master class will meet from 3:00 to 5:00. For more information about this class, please click on the following link:  https://charlottelit.org/  Robin and Judy’s faculty talk starts at 5:30. The talk is free, but registration is required. Here is the link:  https://charlottelit.org/events/

Both Robin’s class and his talk relate to his new memoir titled How to Change History: A Salvage Project, which the University of Nebraska Press published a few months ago. In commenting on this memoir, author Brenda Miller, wrote, “Reading How to Change History is akin to sitting with an intimate friend, going through old photos and scrapbooks, conversing deep into the night about what connects us to the past and what might endure into the future.”

I contacted Robin and asked him for more information about his new memoir.  Here is what he sent to me:

My latest book, How to Change History: A Salvage Project, can be described variously as a collection of linked essays or a memoir-in-essays, a tricky form no matter what you call it. I say it’s tricky because it implies (though doesn’t quite admit) that the essays were written separately as stand-alones rather than written with the intentionality of a book. That’s not to say that the essays were slapped together randomly, but that the intentionality of the book proceeded the writing of the contents. That’s certainly true in my case and I’d wager, in the cases of most such books. Still, it’s important for such a book to have the cohesion of a book that was intended from the start as something large and of a piece.

Why is that important? I’m not saying such cohesion is important to me when I read some random collection of essays or random collection of stories. In fact, I love hodge-podge collections that show an author’s stylistic and thematic range and roving interests. But editors and perhaps most other readers want something that builds, that leads somewhere.

If I tell you the range of subjects in the book, you’ll be forgiven (well, maybe not. I’m sensitive) for clapping back, “Well, that’s just a hodge podge after all, with a fancy title slapped on it.” My subject matter includes photography, travelogues, TV shows, real estate come-ons, washed up rock stars, incontinent dachshunds, stalkers, war memorials, skeletons in the closet, scrapbooks, pre-cancerous moles, murder, the Philippine-American War, Sherwood Anderson, James Agee, curses, divorce and skinny dipping.

I’d argue that all these subjects are as one, first because they all sprang from my mind, but also because they reflect my obsession with memory and erasure. I am at once attracted and repelled by gestures of memorializing. I want not only to be remembered but to remember others, and I know that this is a losing battle.

And so, I write about a memorial plaque to a former colleague who died of a heart attack during my time at UNC Charlotte. The English Department made a little memorial plaque for him and hung it on the spot where he used to hang out in the hallway, smoking (in the days when people smoked indoors) and chatting with anyone he could collar. Jim’s Corner, it was called. But not long after, the department moved to a new building and Jim’s Corner was no more, the plaque likely thrown away or lost in the move. I had since moved across the country, so I did not know of its removal until a couple of years later.

Another essay features a scrapbook I bought at an estate sale in Virginia, of a woman who had meticulously collected the ephemera of her life over a four-year period during WWII. The scrapbook was amazing to me, and I bought it despite a hefty $75 price tag. Among its treasures were the pair of nylon stockings she wore throughout the war, theater tickets, a performance review (rather mixed) of her job as a volunteer on the psych ward of Walter Reid Memorial Hospital, a menu from Antoine’s in New Orleans, her birth certificate (we share the same birthday, though many years apart), dental x-rays, you name it. This was her own memorial to herself, but a memorial with little context. How to piece it together into a life, a remembrance from scraps?

If you read the book, and I hope you will, far from a hodgepodge, I’m confident that you will see that these are indeed linked essays. This is a memoir-in-essays. But it took me years – 25 years to be exact – to see what now seems obvious. For years, I wanted to collect my essays into a book, and I tried various configurations and titles. It took me so many years because it took me that long to finally see what held these essays together. I don’t remember all the titles I tried out, thankfully, but one that stays with me is A Handbook for Haunting. Not a bad title, actually. But not the right title for my book. Once I understood that the best title for my book was How to Change History, I understood everything about my book that previously had been obscured. That’s the only way I can frame it – it was like all my essays were poured into a funnel and out the other end came that title. Suddenly, I knew which essay would anchor the book and which one would end it, and that has never changed.

Readers who want to know more about Robin should check out his Substack Turning Life into Fiction https://robinhemley.substack.com/ as well as his writing retreat and editing venture, https://authorsatlarge.com/

I plan to attend Robin and Judy’s joint talk on September 26, and I am looking forward to reconnecting with Robin and hearing about his latest book.  Robin truly is a world traveler, but he will always have a place in Storied Charlotte, and he will always be my friend wherever he goes. 

Tags: memoirRobin Hemley

Honoring Ken Sanford and His Book about the History of UNC Charlotte  

September 06, 2025 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

James Kenneth (Ken) Sanford, the author of Charlotte and UNC Charlotte: Growing Up Together, died on August 25, 2025, at the age of ninety-three. Bonnie Cone, the founder of UNC Charlotte, hired Ken in 1964, the year before Charlotte College became the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Ken’s official title was Director of Public Information and Publications, a position he held until his retirement in 1994. Drawing on his inside knowledge of the early history of the university, he set to work on writing a history of UNC Charlotte around the time that he retired. The book came out in 1996 under the title of Charlotte and UNC Charlotte: Growing Up Together, and it established Ken as an important Charlotte historian.

Remembering Ken Sanford, Charlotte's first public relations ...

I first met Ken a few years after I arrived at UNC Charlotte in 1984. He and Sam Nixon, one of the people who worked in his office, arranged for a reporter from The Charlotte Observer to interview me about my research. At the time, I was impressed with how much Ken knew about the publications by UNC Charlotte’s faculty members. 

When Ken’s book came out, I attended an event related to the launching of the book. I still have the copy of the book that he signed. I remember him saying, “You’re in the book.” Well, my curiosity got the best of me, so I checked, and sure enough, he mentioned my research in a couple passages in the book. What impressed me the most about the book, however, are the chapters in which he explains how Bonnie Cone succeeded in founding the university. In these chapters, he relates Bonnie Cone’s campaign to establish the university to the larger history of Charlotte during the post-World War Two years. Ken’s account of how Charlotte’s leaders from this period got behind Bonnie Cone’s campaign stands out as an indispensable source for anyone who is interested in the history of Charlotte during these years.

In a sense, Ken’s book is much more than a history of a university. While it certainly provides readers with a detailed telling of the university’s first fifty years, the book also speaks to larger concerns. In the preface to the book, Doug Orr, a former UNC Charlotte administrator who went on to serve as the president of Warren Wilson College, comments on how Ken’s book transcends the history of UNC Charlotte:

9780945344025: Charlotte and Unc Charlotte: Growing Up Together

Ken Sanford’s account of this special university is worth reading on one level as an engaging account of one university’s formative years during the second half of the twentieth century, and of the cast of individuals, decisions, an events that marked its progress and union with a city also experiencing its coming of age. But in a more universal sense, it chronicles the manner in which an American university created out of a cow pasture can address its urban dynamic and, in fact, reach out and envelop itself with that urban presence, and therefore be a model for building a contemporary university.

In 2020, Ken moved to the Aldersgate Retirement Community in Charlotte, and it was there that I saw him for the last time. I occasionally give presentations at retirement communities, including Aldersgate. After one of my talks at Aldersgate, Ken came up to me, and we talked for a few minutes.  He said that he liked my presentation, and he told me that he was glad to see UNC Charlotte professors sharing their expertise with members of the community. In reflecting on that final conversation with Ken, I realized that my presentation was related to Ken’s longstanding conviction that UNC Charlotte should be an active player in the larger Charlotte community. Throughout his career, he acted on this conviction, and Storied Charlotte is a better place because he did. 

Tags: Ken Sanford