The Monti -- Durham Chapel Hill storytelling

Inaugural Event: April 22nd, 7:30pm, Spice Street Chapel Hill

Zeke Smith is a 2005 UNC graduate who joined the staff of Chapel Hill Magazine as associate editor in the summer of 2007, after having worked for other various media organizations around town, including WCHL and the Chapel Hill News. He is a freelance sports and editorial photographer whose work has been featured in such publications as SportsIllustrated.com, Carolina Blue and Rivals.com. He is also the youngest of four children in an Army family who have called places such as Colorado, Kentucky and Belgium home. His wide-ranging interests include college sports, theology and hip-hop. He currently lives in Chapel Hill with his wife, Wendy. www.zekesmithphoto.com

Tiffany Lopez is a proud graduate of the University of Alabama, department of New College. Since moving to Raleigh in 2004, she has earned her Master of Library Science, adopted an adorable brown dog and married the love of her life (but not necessarily in that order). She spends most of her free time with said husband and dog, knitting and watching the Alabama Crimson Tide and Pittsburgh Steelers dominate the world of football.

Michael O'Foghludha is President of Durham's Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, recipient of a 2008 Indy Award in the Arts. His most recent project for Little Green Pig was directing Athol Fugard's play "The Island", named "the most powerful production of the year" by the Independent Weekly. Michael can be seen regularly on stage at Manbites Dog Theatre on Foster St., where he will appear this September in "The Italian Actress", loosely adapted from Frederico Fellini's classic film "81/2".

Sam Stephenson is a writer and Jazz Loft Project Director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Since 1997 he has researched the life and work of photographer W. Eugene Smith, authoring two books: Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Project (W. W. Norton, 2001) and W. Eugene Smith 55 (Phaidon Press, 2001). He curated a 400-piece exhibition of Dream Street for the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and the International Center of Photography in New York City in 2001-02. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Oxford American, Smithsonian, A Public Space, and Doubletake, among many. He has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition several times, along with CBS Sunday Morning and CNN, and BBC-TV’s seminal 2007 series, The Genius of Photography. His book, The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes by W. Eugene Smith at 821 Sixth Avenue 1957-1965, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in November 2009. The Jazz Loft Project outcomes also include a major public radio series produced in collaboration with WNYC: New York Public Radio and a traveling exhibition to open at the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center in February 2010. His biography of Smith is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.