10 stops on North Carolina’s literary trail

Travel across North Carolina by embarking on our literary trail, which features 10 stops that mark the state’s rich literary history. 

Any fan of reading can tell you that each book they’ve read has been a journey, each story a vessel to transport readers into a new realm—be it some other city, time period, or fantasyland that is inaccessible in the real world. 

Perhaps the best part about reading is the fact that as it quenches a thirst for knowledge it also deepens that thirst, which is to say each new thing learned sparks curiosity to learn more. This is called “going down the rabbit hole,” a reference to Lewis Carroll’s beloved 19th-century children’s book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

Whether reading nonfiction or fiction, for pleasure or instructional purposes, one can always go deeper. 

While reading is a journey in itself, some also wish to go deeper by visiting the spaces connected to their favorite books or authors. Readers have been drawn to the areas where books are set, birthplaces or known hangouts of their favorite authors, or historic bookshops and libraries where more stories await. 

Below, we’ve put together a literary trail through North Carolina comprising 10 stops, each one 100 miles or less from the last with a total drive time right at 10 hours, that highlight the Tar Heel State’s rich history with the written word. Starting west in the mountains of Asheville and moving east to a mythical mailbox on the coast of Sunset Beach, these 10 sites will reawaken your love for reading and all that comes with it. 

1. The Thomas Wolfe House, Asheville

52 North Market St., Asheville

Considered by many to be one of the giants of 20th-century American literature, Thomas Wolfe immortalized his childhood home in his epic autobiographical novel, “Look Homeward, Angel.” Another famed novel from the writer, titled “You Can’t Go Home Again” and released posthumously, tells the story of novelist George Webber, a fledgling author who writes a book about his hometown of Libya Hill (Asheville) only to be all but exiled by his former neighbors who do not appreciate their depiction in the story. 

You, however, can go back to Wolfe’s home again, as the Friends of Thomas Wolfe organization has preserved the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site in Asheville. The historic Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse operated by Wolfe’s mother was depicted as “Dixieland” in “Look Homeward” and was the writer’s real-life home for 10 years.

In 1998, the historic home suffered damage in a fire that was later determined to have been the result of arson. Approximately 20% of the original structure and 15% of the artifact collection were destroyed. After intensive restoration to both the historic house and surviving artifact collection, the Old Kentucky Home once again opened its doors to visitors in May of 2004.

While in Asheville, take a trip to the Biltmore Estate, the famed mansion built by George Vanderbilt that was a frequent hangout of Wolfe and fellow writers of the age, such as Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Paul Leicester Ford. 

The Grove Park Inn, located on the Biltmore property and still taking boarders today, was home to The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald for two summers (1935-1936) as he recovered from tuberculosis. The time was a low point in Fitzgerald’s life as he struggled to fight off alcoholism and pined for his equally brilliant bride, Zella Fitzgerald, who at the time was a resident of Asheville’s Highland Hospital, a nearby psychiatric facility.

Bonus stop: O. Henry, the Greensboro native and renowned short story writer whom you’ll learn more about when we reach that point of the trail, is buried in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery. 

The Thomas Wolfe House in Asheville, the first stop on our North Carolina literary trail. (Abe Ezekowitz/CC BY-SA 2.0)

2. Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, Flat Rock

30 miles southeast

81 Carl Sandburg Lane, Flat Rock

The property known as Connemara has a long and complicated history, transitioning from a symbol of racial enslavement and segregation to the home of a renowned warrior for social justice. The main house was built in 1838 by an enslaver who served in the Confederate government and fought throughout his lifetime to promote the theory of white supremacy. The next two property owners were prominent businessmen who also worked to maintain racial segregation after Reconstruction.

Then, in 1945, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, biographer, folksinger, lecturer, and Poet of the People Carl Sandburg purchased the property, moving from Michigan with his wife and daughter in search of a more suitable location to raise their dairy goats. While living at the home, now a national park, Sandburg published “Complete Poems” in 1950, delivered the Lincoln Day address to a joint session of Congress in 1959, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson in1964, then a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP for his coverage of the 1919 Chicago race riots and his “life-long struggle to extend the frontiers of social justice.” 

Sandburg died in his home on July 22, 1967, at age 89. His widow sold the property to the National Park Service the following year, donating all the family’s belongings to the agency so that her husband’s legacy could be preserved forever. The park opened in 1974 as the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.

Unfortunately, the site and the surrounding town of Flat Rock suffered significant damage due to Hurricane Helene. Flooding washed out two bridges on the surrounding trails and further compromised the Front Lake Dam, which failed in 2022 and was scheduled to undergo reconstruction, which must now be replanned. 

Though the historic buildings were reported to be undamaged during the storm, they remained closed at the time of this writing. However, with many of the trails at the site having reopened at Christmastime, there is reason to believe that access to the historic home should reopen sometime this year. 

Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. (Victoria Stauffenberg/National Park Service)

3. Copper Restaurant, Charlotte

100 miles due east

311 East Blvd., Charlotte

Sitting in the heart of Charlotte’s Dilworth neighborhood, founded in the 1890s as the city’s first streetcar suburb, is Copper Restaurant, an award-winning eatery that serves traditional Indian food with a modern twist. Though the home in which Copper is located looks historic enough, as do many of the surrounding homes in the neighborhood, what’s not apparent at first glance is just how much rich history lies inside the turn-of-the-century bungalow. 

Originally built about 1907 by local insurance tycoon Robert Andrew Mayer, the Mayer House was home to Mayer and his family for just eight years before George Stephens, acting on a petty beef with Dilworth designer Edward Latta, bought the house and convinced the Mayers to move to his own newer nearby neighborhood, Myers Park. 

Das Mayer House in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Eigene Aufnahme/CC BY-SA 3.0)

It changed hands a few times until 1937, when it was bought by Walter T. and Janie M. Branson, who, while using the house as a home and office for their heating contractor business, also rented furnished rooms within. It was here that J. Reeves McCullers, formerly Carson Smith, rented out a two-bedroom apartment. 

Having ditched the idea of a music career to pursue her writing, Carson McCullers had already begun to conceive and shape the major ideas for her first novel, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” which centers around someone from a small Southern town who can’t see or talk, when she arrived in Charlotte. 

Upon moving into her new Dilworth apartment, Carson began work on the book in earnest. After about two months, the McCullers moved to another apartment in a house on Central Avenue that is no longer standing, where by the end of another six months, she had completed the first six chapters and an outline in detail of the work. 

When McCullers submitted that outline for a Houghton Mifflin Fellowship Award, which included a publishing contract (and which he ended up winning), what would become a legendary writing career was born. 

Carson McCullers in 1959. (Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress)

According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission (CMHLC), “On the coldest days of her stay in Charlotte, [McCullers] worked in the public library and kept warm by continual reference to the sherry in her thermos.

“Since she wrote the first six chapters of her book in Charlotte, which sets the stage in describing the town where the story takes place, and was in the habit of taking long walks in the afternoon,” the CMHLC’s Mayer House entry continues, “it is not surprising to find descriptions of the fictional town, including mills and mill workers, that are reminiscent of how much of Charlotte must have been at the time.” 

4. Maya Angelou Homes, Winston-Salem

83 miles northeast

2716 Bartram Rd, Winston-Salem

3240 Valley Road, Winston-Salem

The writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelous had a lot of major works, but her 1969 autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is her best known. (Shutterstock)

Originally from St. Louis, African American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows that spans over half a century. 

After accepting a lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies role at Wake Forest University in 1982, Angelou said she considered herself “a teacher who writes,” and she would go on to teach generations of students at the university until her death in 2014. 

Two of Angelou’s former homes still stand in Winston-Salem. She bought the home on Valley Road in 1991, and it served as her primary residence for more than two decades until her death. Thanks to Angelou’s early expansion, the house is 6,400 square feet with six bedrooms and seven bathrooms. 

Angelou invited close friend Oprah Winfrey to the home for an interview in July 1993, during which they sat in the sunroom to chat. At one point, Winfrey said, “You have the kind of home I hope to have one day.” 

The house was still for sale in 2024, as the current owner was “looking for an individual or institution that honors and appreciates Dr. Angelou’s legacy to take over the property,” according to WS Today. 

Another home of Angelou’s, located on Bartram Road, sold for $2 million in 2020 and has undergone thorough renovations since Angelou’s death. The iconic writer bought the home in 1994, though there is a richer history involved with the property, as the owners who preceded Angelou were well known in their own right, and the yard’s landscaping has more recently been redesigned by internationally known painter Chin Chin Tan, according to Piedmont Historic Homes. 

Visitors may not be able to actually step foot on these properties, as they both remain privately owned, though each spring on April 7, Wake Forest University celebrates the venerated writer’s birthday with its Maya Angelou Garden Party on campus.  

5. High Point Market, High Point

30 miles southeast

South Main Street, High Point

The tensions between history and possibility—and our complex and sometimes contradictory relationships to each of those—are the hallmarks of Margaret Maron’s fictional mystery writing. She has described her well-known character, Deborah Knott, as a “young woman with one foot in the agrarian past and one foot in the urban present” and her work as “walking that tightrope between Southern archetype and Southern stereotype.”  

In 2013, Maron was named a Grand Master for lifetime achievement by the Mystery Writers of America, and in 2016 was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. 

Margaret Maron. (Courtesy of Margaret Maron/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Maron tackled some tough topics in her day, writing about the burning of Black churches in 1998’s “Home Fires” and covering broader topics throughout her novels, including domestic abuse, immigration, and overdevelopment. 

Her August 1997 thriller “Killer Market,” the fifth in Maron’s Deborah Knott series, was perhaps a lighter read, dropping Knotts in High Point amidst Market Week, during which tens of thousands of visitors come from more than 100 countries twice each year. As fictional deaths occur around her, first-time visitor Knotts has to make sense of the small-town intrigue that unravels among the 7 million square feet of furniture showroom space. 

“It was really weird and spooky,” Maron said of her own first-time visit to the market that inspired the late-’90s novel. “There was row after row of stuff. This is a fabulous setting for something mysterious.”

6. O.Henry Hotel, Greensboro

16 miles northeast

624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro

Distinguished and world-renowned short story writer O. Henry was born in Greensboro as William Sydney Porter in 1862. He was educated at his Aunt Lina’s school in Greensboro before moving to Texas, where he ran into trouble with the law and began his writing career. After that, he penned such classics as “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Last Leaf,” “Of Cabbages and Kings,” and “The Ransom of Red Chief,” among others. 

Filled with remarkable characters, strange twists of plot, and descriptive accounts of distinctly American times and places, O. Henry’s work remains hugely popular and renowned today, well over a century after his death in 1910. 

When the first O.Henry Hotel was built in his hometown in 1919, the New York Times reported that “No memorial could be more appropriate for ‘O. Henry’ than a hotel and no other would have pleased his fancy. ‘A lot of famous writers,’ said one guest, ‘have houses they once occupied preserved in their honor, but O. Henry lived most of his life in hotels. A hotel is representative of him as no house could be, and representative, too, of his stories, which were chiefly concerned with the transient guests of life, the waifs and strays of present-day existence who found in hotels and restaurants the setting for so many of their poignant adventures.’”

A postcard depicting the original O. Henry Hotel. (General Hotel Supply Co./Public domain)

Though hugely successful initially, business declined in the second half of the 20th century, and the hotel was shut down in the 1960s. But alas, one last plot twist was still to come, as a second iteration of the hotel opened 2 miles from the original location in 1998. 

“With the city’s justifiable pride in its native son, we couldn’t resist naming our hotel the O.Henry,” the website reads. A 1998 portrait of William Sydney Porter by Frank P. Holton III that was commissioned for the opening of the O.Henry Hotel hangs in the hotel lobby.

7. State Library of North Carolina

80 miles east

109 East Jones St., Raleigh

It was not long after 1792, when Raleigh was officially named state capital, taking the title from Fayetteville, that state officials recognized the need for a centralized and properly administered collection of legal texts, state publications, and Congressional documents. The original Capitol served as such, with the Secretary of State overseeing those texts, including a library of nearly 1000 volumes, but it burned in 1831. 

Plans for the new Capitol included space for a re-constituted State Library of North Carolina. When the new Capitol opened in 1840, a full-time librarian was appointed, and the library became a vital part of state government. By the early 19th century, the library had expanded to hold more than 40,000 volumes. In 1902, the head librarian finally got some help, as an assistant was brought on. 

While the State Library did serve as a public library throughout the 19th century at a time when more localized libraries were rare, its primary focus remained on serving the needs of state officials. That began to change throughout the 20th century as new needs were recognized and new technologies became available.

With the 1956 merger of the State Library and the Library Commission, both staffing and programming expanded dramatically. Multiple initiatives and services—administration of state aid for libraries, library advocacy and delivery for the blind, IN-WATS reference service, etc.—were implemented in rapid succession over the following two decades.

The State Library of North Carolina is located in the State Archives Building in Raleigh. (Alan Westmoreland/Public domain)

As the library reached the turn of the millennium, it continued to evolve, transitioning from 16-millimeter films to videotapes to DVDs. Books for the blind, originally limited to Braille and large print items, were gradually augmented by books on phonograph records, books on tape, and then digital recordings. Hardcopy government publications gave way to digital documents, podcasts, websites, and a variety of social media formats. 

“The State Library has adapted to these changes, providing expertise on policy, infrastructure, metadata and cataloging, and technology,” reads the website, “with such statewide initiatives as NC ECHO, the Access to State Government Information Initiative, the Ensuring Democracy Through Digital Access project, NOBLE, and NC CARDinal.” 

Today, the establishment continues to enrich the lives of North Carolinians through access to information resources, strengthening communities through exceptional library services, and inspiring and supporting literacy and lifelong learning for all North Carolinians.

8. Evans Metropolitan AME Zion Church, Fayetteville

63 miles due south

301 North Cool Spring St., Fayetteville

Born in Ohio to free Black parents of multiracial heritage who had left their native city of Fayetteville prior to the Civil War, Charles Chesnutt moved back with his parents to the eastern Piedmont town after the war to complete his education before he began teaching. 

He was named assistant principal (1877–80) and then principal (1880–83) of the State Colored Normal School, now Fayetteville State University, but he became so distressed about the treatment of Black people in the South after Reconstruction that he moved with his own wife and children back to Ohio. 

Due to his heritage, Charles Chesnutt could have ‘passed’ as white but was loudly and proudly Black. (Cleveland Public Library Image Collection/Public domain)

Between 1885-1905 Chesnutt published more than 50 tales, short stories, and essays, plus a biography of the abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass and three novels. Published in August 1887, his short story “The Goophered Grapevine” was the first work by a Black person accepted by The Atlantic Monthly. The story was said to be so subtle in its refutation of the romantic depictions of plantation life espoused by contemporary Thomas Nelson Page that most readers missed the irony. 

By the 1970s, Chesnutt was called by some the first important Black American novelist, having produced works that anticipated those of successors such as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. 

Charles Chesnutt was an active member of the Evans Metropolitan AME Zion Church. (Gerry Dincher/CC BY-SA 3.0)

In addition to his duties at the school during his time in Fayetteville, Chesnutt served as organist, choirmaster, and Sunday School superintendent at Evans Metropolitan AME Zion Church, founded by a free Black cobbler named Harry Evans around 1780. After passing away in 1810, Evans became known as the “Father of Methodism” in Fayetteville. 

9. Thalian Hall, Wilmington

90 miles southeast

310 Chestnut St., Wilmington

Constructed in 1855-1858 at a time when Wilmington was the biggest city in North Carolina, the City Hall/Thalian Hall building has had the unusual distinction of serving as both the area’s political and cultural centers. 

Upon opening, Thalian Hall housed the town government, the library, and an Opera House that sat 1,000 people, which would have been 10% of the town’s population in the late 19th century.

Oscar Wilde in 1882. (Napoleon Sarony/Public domain)

It was not until the Civil War had ended, in July 1882 specifically, that a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde stepped off a train from Charleston and checked into Wilmington’s Purcell House (later Bailey movie theater and currently slated for a mixed-use development on Front Street). 

Making the town a stop on his seven-month speaking tour, Wilde had already become famous despite having published a sparse amount of material, according to Wrightsville Beach Magazine.  

Interior of Thalian Hall. (DiscoA340/CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Thalian Hall Opera House hosted his lecture, titled “The Decorative Arts,” and drew a crowd described as “fair” and “small” but attentive and enthusiastic. He went on to spend an eventful night at Pine Grove resort (now The Fisherman’s Wife gift shop), swimming in the ocean and racing companions along the beach, before leaving for his next tour stop in Norfolk, Virginia. 

Bonus stop: If you’re looking for good Port City eats, make a stop at Dixie Grill, a purported favorite of “The Crucible” playwright Arthur Miller, according to the folks at Old Books on Front Street, who host their own literary history walking tours. 

10. Kindred Spirits Mailbox, Sunset Beach

50 miles southwest

Bird Island

There are likely multiple times a day when some visitor to Sunset Beach passes by the Kindred Spirits mailbox sticking out from the sand in the dunes between two benches on a secluded stretch of Bird Island, a full mile from the nearest public beach access point, and thinks, “Well that’s an odd place to receive mail.” But that’s the point. 

The Kindred Spirits mailbox isn’t for receiving mail; it’s for writing it. Placed at the secretive location by Frank Nesmith and his then-lady friend Claudia Sailor nearly 50 years ago, the benches provide introspective writers a tranquil space and a journal in which to put their deepest thoughts to paper, then place their writings in the mailbox to be delivered. 

The letters, journals, scribblings or what have you aren’t actually brought to anyone or any place, it’s the delivery from brain to paper that makes the process special. 

The Kindred Spirits Mailbox. (Polly Hutchinson/CC BY-SA 2.0)

If you’re a fan of romance writer Nicholas Sparks, most famous for writing books-turned-movies like “The Notebook” and “A Walk to Remember,” you already know the significance of the Kindred Spirits mailbox to his 2018 novel “Every Breath,” set on Sunset Beach.

“The first bit of inspiration for ‘Every Breath’ was from a familiar destination in my home state of North Carolina,” Sparks wrote on his website. “There is a mailbox, well known to locals as ‘Kindred Spirit,’ that sits out on a secluded stretch of coastline—it’s a place where passersby fill a journal with their thoughts, fears, and dreams — and while it has a rich history all its own, what has stayed with me all these years is the romantic notion of a lonely mailbox in the middle of nowhere filled with handwritten notes of love, loss, and hope.” 

Bonus stop(s): If you’re a true Nicholas Sparks adorer, your tour doesn’t have to stop here. VisitNC has created its own four-stop tour to be carried out over four days along the North Carolina coast, highlighting some of the locations where Nicholas Sparks books have been set and/or his movies filmed. But wait, there’s more! There’s also a two-day tour that focuses solely on filming locations from “Nights in Rodanthe,” the 2008 Richard Gere and Diane Lane romance adapted from the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name, which was based on the story of how Sparks met and courted his wife in the Outer Banks.

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.