Chronology

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1. Recent decades · 1976–2026

2. 1978–1981
   Appointment, election or service · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Lee Smith teaches creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill

   Novelist Lee Smith taught creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill as a lecturer from 1978 to 1981, before joining NC State.

3. July 20, 1986
   Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Six writers read at the Hardback Cafe to raise money against the Shearon Harris nuclear plant

   Joe Ashby Porter, Jill McCorkle, Clyde Edgerton, Lee Smith, Garrett Epps and Elizabeth Spencer read from their work at a $50-a-plate benefit dinner at the Hardback Cafe, raising over $2,000 for the Coalition for Alternatives to Shearon Harris. Organizers turned away 30 ticket requests because of the room's fire-code limit.

4. April 4, 1998
   Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Annie Dillard joins the Rubin writers panel at the North Carolina Literary Festival

   At the North Carolina Literary Festival at UNC, Dillard sat on a panel of writers who had studied under Louis Rubin, with Lee Smith, Katie Letcher Lyle, Margaret Gibson, Sylvia Wilkinson and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, in Hamilton Hall.

5. November 30, 2007
   Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough Lee Smith, Randall Kenan and Allan Gurganus gather with other authors at Brick Alley Books

   Kenan, Lee Smith and Allan Gurganus shared stories at a gathering of authors at Brick Alley Books in Hillsborough. The Daily Tar Heel used the evening to report on the town as a home for writers, quoting Smith, Gurganus, Kenan, poet laureate Mike Troy and photographer Elizabeth Matheson.

6. April 21, 2023
   Publication, speech or performance · Orange County Main Library, Hillsborough Lee Smith launches her novel Silver Alert at the Main Library in Hillsborough

   The Orange County Public Library held a reading and signing at its Main Library on West Margaret Lane to launch Lee Smith's novel Silver Alert.

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.