The Thomas Wolfe Society and all Wolfe fans are looking forward to a centennial celebration of Wolfe's birth in the year 2000! In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the Center for the Study of the American South is convening a task force that will plan events for the Wolfe Centennial on the Chapel Hill campus. The task force will be careful to coordinate these events with the Octoberfest and special events planned in Asheville, North Carolina and with the meeting of the Thomas Wolfe Society. Among highlights, we firmly believe, will be an unveiling of the Thomas Wolfe Postage stamp that the Society has labored so strenuously to achieve.

Another project spearheaded by the Society should also come to fruition that year: the first Thomas Wolfe Lectureship will be held on the UNC campus. As of this writing, the drive to establish the endowment for the lectureship is about $9,000 short of its goal of $50,000. Chancellor Michael Hooker has promised that if we achieve the goal of $50,000, he will match the effort. That would provide an endowment of $100,000--ensuring a program worthy of the Wolfe legacy. (You can help us find the final $9,000. Please send your gift or pledge, marked for the Thomas Wolfe Lectureship, to the Arts and Sciences Foundation, 104 New West, CB# 6115, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-6115.) All members of the Society will receive special invitations to attend the inaugural lecture.

"How can one speak of Munich but to say it is a kind of German heaven? Some people sleep and dream they are in Paradise, but all over Germany people sometimes dream that they have gone to Munich in Bavaria. And really, in an astonishing way, the city is a great Germanic dream translated into life."

This will be the first time the Thomas Wolfe Society will hold it's annual meeting outside our national borders. Frank Wilson, vice president of the Thomas Wolfe Society, has planned an outstanding program, and there are rich opportunities to explore the land that so lured Wolfe and played a significant part in his writing!

Alphabet graphics by Harlan Wallach ©copyright 1995