Minrose Gwin grew up in a segregated Mississippi town much like the one she wrote about in her debut novel “The Queen of Palmyra” (Harper Collins/2010) and like the book’s protagonist, she was disturbed by the willful ignorance of white people in her community who blinded themselves to the problems of racism and violence. Gwin, Kenan Eminent Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, now makes her home in North Carolina where she continues to reveal the unspoken truths of Southern culture in her writing.

Local election season officially gets underway today. Candidates are able to file for election in both Wake and Durham.

The most crowded race is expected to be for Mayor of Raleigh. Incumbent Charles Meeker has announced he will not seek re-election. That has opened up the field to a number of candidates.

Local officials in Greensboro are considering more than a million dollars in incentives for Honda Aircraft to build a service and support center. Honda's offer asks for about $775,000 from Guilford County and $520,000 more from the city of Greensboro. The company opened a headquarters building at Piedmont Triad International Airport four years ago. That facility has about 600 workers. Honda tells county commissioners the expansion would add more than 400 jobs over the next five years. Commissioner Kirk Perkins supports the incentives. 

Here's another story from The Monti story slam. It's a competition of sorts -- where randomly chosen volunteers tell 5-minute stories centered around a theme. This week's theme was "law and order." The winner was Julie MacDonald, a community college teacher who lives in Durham. Her story was recorded live earlier this week at Motorco in Durham.

A state legislative committee has approved congressional and state Senate redistricting maps, which are redrawn every ten years.

The Republican-led committee approved the maps earlier today. But committee leaders got into testy exchanges with Democrats, who accuse Republicans of crowding African-American voters into more districts to dilute their statewide vote. Democratic Senate Leader Martin Nesbitt tried to get Republican Senator Bob Rucho, chair of the Redistricting committee, to admit to what's known as "packing."

The Plug-In electric car conference wrapped up its four-day run this week in Raleigh. It's the first time the conference, which draws car makers and utility planners from around the country, has been held on the East Coast. Conference planners were drawn to North Carolina's capital by the growing demand for electric vehicles in the Triangle.

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.

Durhamite Brian Hill is the lead singer of the ska band Regatta 69, even though the rest of the band is based in Berlin. There’s still a big ska scene in Europe, and Hill wants to lead a revival of the genre stateside, so he’s starting locally. He’s organized a concert series called Skank Festival 2011 that visits Greensboro this weekend.

Beyonce is up at the top of the pop music charts this summer. The fact that she's in the top 10 again is no surprise, but what is surprising is that a record from Bon Iver is near the top of the charts. The band is the latest project by former Raleigh resident Justin Vernon. He's coming back to the Triangle next week to play the Raleigh Amphitheater.

The three young poets we're following on Morning Edition this summer are continuing their Poetic Portraits of a Revolution project in Tunisia after their sojourn in Egypt. Much of the world's attention is focused elsewhere now. But Will McInerney, Mohammad Moussa, Kane Smego and photographer Sameer Abdel-khalek are finding that, as in Egypt, the Tunisian revolution is not over.