I'm with Katie Wyatt, executive director of the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, and Ed Southern of the North Carolina Writers Network.

Katie, this is such a beautiful property and home.

How did it all get started?

- We're here in the Boyd House, which is the original home of James and Catherine Boyd.

And they were really visionaries of their time in how they wanted to give back to the community.

And upon their deaths, they gave the home up for the historic preservation and to become a center for the arts and humanities.

The real first partnerships came with Sam Reagan, who was the original Department of Cultural Resources director, and he created really important programs that have their founding here.

One was for Weymouth to become the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in partnership with the North Carolina Writers Network.

The other was an important program we host here called Writers In Residence Program.

We have two to three authors here every week who are from North Carolina, writing about North Carolina, who come here to be in a place of beauty and a place of creativity and of deep history to work on whatever it is they're gonna put out into the world.

The history here is so deep and so important for the preservation of this land.

The area that we sit on is the original tract of the Boyd land, which was at one point 1500 acres, and the idea was to preserve the longleaf pine.

We've just reopened our equestrian center.

The Boyds were also very passionate and fundamental in the Moore County hounds and in the hunt, and Weymouth Center really brings together the cultural and arts opportunities for our community.

- [Deborah] So Ed, tell me about this room and what it all means.

- When James Boyd lived here, this was his study.

This was where he did his writing.

But this was also a house where he welcomed a lot of the great writers at the time.

William Faulkner stayed here.

Thomas Wolf was a frequent guest.

There's one story about Wolf arriving on the train in Southern Pines in the middle of the night, walking up, finding an open window, climbing in and falling asleep on the couch.

The great thing, I think, about having the Literary Hall of Fame here is that this isn't just a room where great work was done or a room where great work is remembered, but this is a place where great work is being done today by the writers who come and stay at Weymouth and find the time and the space and the spirit to write their own words, create their own work.

The Literary Hall of Fame selects new inductees every other year.

We hold a ceremony on the grounds here at Weymouth that really is like a family reunion for the literary community in the state, and it's one of the ways that we keep that community vital and ongoing.

- [Deborah] Well, I can definitely tell why this place is a literary treasure.

- Thank you.

- [Deborah] Katie, what can visitors to the Weymouth Center for Arts and Humanities do?

- So many things.

In the first place, we have 26 acres of gardens and grounds which include a historic English garden, fountains.

We've just renovated our stables.

So there are beautiful horses that you can visit here.

There's the Boyd House, and we have a self-guided tour that you can take as you come through the doors.

You can see the Literary Hall of Fame.

You can visit the rooms where the Boyds lived.

It's really a beautiful historic place to come and visit.

We also present more than a hundred events a year.

We wanna be a place of inclusivity that through the arts and humanities people experience a different way of looking at the world.

So we have writers in residence readings, summer camps programs, many community festivals.

You can hear live music here through our jazz series, a chamber music series, presentations of arts and humanities lectures.

So many things, there's about two events a week.

So please be sure and check out our website, weymouthcenter.org.

- Sounds exciting.

Katie and Ed, the Weymouth Center is such an inspirational place.

Thank you so much for hosting us.

- Thank you for coming.

- The Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities is at 555 East Connecticut Avenue in Southern Pines, and they're open Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and they have special events all year long.

For more information, go to their website at weymouthcenter.org.

To learn more about the NC Writers Network, go to ncwriters.org.