Byer’s work depicts people during times of love, marriage and child rearing set against a larger background of natural and cultural history.

This event is free to the public and is held in conjunction with the exhibition Nace Brock: Painter, Poet and Photographer, which will be on view in the Museum’s Holden Community Gallery through Sunday, April 27.

Ignatius Watsworth Brock (1866-1950) was a painter and poet, but he was best known as a photographer whose work included staged painterly portraits, mountain landscapes and genre scenes marketed to tourists.

Museum visitors will no doubt feel Byer’s work has a meaningful and timeless connection to Brock’s photographs.

“I have found the art of photography to be a powerful inspiration over the years, especially the work of the late Sharon Anglin Kuhne whose photographs helped me find the voice of Alma in my collection Wildwood Flower,” Byer said of her upcoming reading. “Nace's work calls up a similar response and I look forward to joining my poetic voice with his visual one when I read at the Asheville Art Museum.”

Byer has received writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She was the former poet-in-residence at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC.

This special event is sponsored by Brunk Auctions.