In Athens, May arrives with chapel bells, crowded sidewalks, final papers, graduation photographs, and the strange awareness that something important is ending just as something new begins. Few writers understood that feeling better than Coleman Barks.  Barks, Athens poet, translator of Rumi, and professor emeritus of English in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, died Feb. 23, 2026, at age 88. Yet even months after his…

The Athens Film Project will launch the first three of its very short films at Ciné’s Lab at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, July 17. A project of the Athens Historical Society that began during the early days of the pandemic, the Film Project’s goal is to create films on Athens history for local 11th grade U.S. History classes. The first two films are already…