A writer looking at a blank page is a like a painter staring at a fresh canvas, a sculptor facing a block of clay or a woodworker holding a chunk of wood. The desire to grab words from thin air and construct them into sentences, notions and ideas comes from an internal fire to describe human emotion and situation. It is a calling, one that picks its creators when the time and place is prime. Writers are messengers, connecting the unknown cosmos to an everyday modern reality.

SEE ALSO: Wordsmiths converge on WCU for Spring Literary Festival

Western Carolina University will be once again play host to an array of writers during the 12th annual Spring Literary Festival, which runs March 31 through April 4. The event is a celebration of the written word, where finely-aged veterans intermingle with the young faces of future generations eager to find their voice. It is a bountiful cross-pollination, one crucial to the perpetuation of the craft.

The advent of three large student apartment complexes around Western Carolina University in the past few years has prompted concern in Cullowhee over increased traffic.

Walking out of the Jackson County Board of Elections offices in Sylva, Lane Perry seemed pleased. A year’s worth of work was about to pay off. 

SEE ALSO: Election laws in the ‘new’ North Carolina

“At the end of the day, we want to be able to get university students to vote where they live for three to five years,” Perry explained on the way to his car.

For most people, the word “jail” stirs up mental images of vertical bars and stark concrete walls, not of rows of books or orange-clad inmates studiously reading them. But bars have, for the most part, turned to Plexiglas and metal doors, and thanks to the collaborative research of librarians and criminal justice faculty at Western Carolina University, an initiative to expand book collections in Western North Carolina jails is gathering steam. 

By Melanie Threlkeld McConnell • Correspondent

Here is a simple solution for stimulating the economy in this country: give women equal pay for equal work, said author and activist Gloria Steinem, during a recent speech at Western Carolina University.

Students and visitors to the Western Carolina University campus, whether in a car or on roller skates, will soon have a few dollars more of incentive to follow the school’s rules governing vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The WCU Board of Trustees approved an increase for a number of citation fees during its March 7 meeting. 

By Jake Flannick • SMN Correspondent

About a year ago, Patrick O’Neal bought an old, chrome-rimmed Schwinn bicycle. He was just looking for an alternative way to get to class from his off-campus dorm. Now he spends most weekends enduring long periods of what he and other cyclists acknowledge as a kind of physical and mental punishment. 

It is a grinding workout routine. The Western Carolina University senior spends his weekends pedaling several dozen mountain miles and speaks with enthusiasm about “putting your body through hell.”

“It’s pretty much my whole life right now,” O’Neal said.

Green space and gardens dominate much of the Western North Carolina landscape, but what determines whether people here actually eat the fruits and veggies that abound? That’s what April Tallant, health professor at WCU, hopes to find out as she crunches the numbers from her latest research project. 

Take an evening walk through the woods this time of year, and odds are you’ll hear the grumpy quacking of a male wood frog, showing off for the ladies. The sound promises the return of warm days and growing gardens, even as icy temperatures fill the forecast. 

For Jessica Duke, this harbinger of a new season coincides with the end of an old. The Western Carolina University graduate student is wrapping up a year of study on behalf of local amphibian species like the wood frog, and what she’s found offers encouragement for animals that are up against some hard times.  

Jake Flannick • SMN Correspondent

For as long as he can remember, Austin Brown’s fascination with plants has remained rooted in their relationship with people.