Calendar of Events
Upcoming events and things to do in Asheville, NC. Below is a list of events for festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, group meetups and more.
Interested in adding an event to our calendar? Please click the green “Post Your Event” button below.

Jack’s Bluegrass Brunch is every Sunday! Our menu kicks off at 12Noon with live tunes by Supper Break from 1-3pm. Try our $6 Bloody Mary or Mimosa, or grab a $15 Bottles of Champagne & OJ! Try one of our tasty brunch specials or order from our artisanal sandwich menu. Sláinte Y’all!

KEY FACTS:
- In the past few days, hospital partners are reporting they are using blood at a much higher rate than normal. When demand is high, and the supply is critically low – that is a dangerous equation for the community.
- Because of the critically low supply, The Blood Connection (TBC) is now having to back-order blood products. This has affected 12 hospital partners so far.
- 48% of days this month, TBC DID NOT collect enough blood to cover hospitals’ needs. For comparison, in May of 2020 (during the pandemic) TBC collected enough to cover those needs 84% of the days.
- There is a high likelihood that TBC will have to start rationing blood by the end of the weekend.
- Heading into a holiday weekend – hospitals are stocking up their blood supply. TBC has already not been able to provide those products.
- The community is the ONLY solution to this dangerous problem. The blood supply for local hospitals is in the community’s hands.

Call it “musical comedy heaven” (Rolling Stone). Call it “the most uproarious new musical in years!” (The Hollywood Reporter). Call it Tootsie!
This laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. Featuring a hilarious Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is “a joyful delight” (The Washington Post) that’s “so packed with punchlines, it should be called a jokebox musical!” (Bloomberg). “In these turbulent times, when the world seems out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” raves Rolling Stone. “Tootsie is it!”

FIRST SET BY THE HOUSE BAND & SECOND SET IS A JAZZ JAM

In conjunction with Sunday Sessions Live (and virtual) music: Food Truck Sundays will bring a new or rotating “staff favorite” cuisine each week to the Beechams Curve offerings.
Gan Shan West, our main culinary provider 6 days a week, is closed on Sundays. Enjoy the convenience, delicious variety and the music – all in one Sunday Funday stop!
**BRAND NEW COMBO** FREE entry. Join us for live music with my never before seen trio (Anthony Dorion on electric bass & Jack Mascari on electric guitar) from 3-5pm. This event will take place in their outdoor space called “The Meadow”. Food truck and brews on site, with plenty of outdoor seating. This venue is also dog friendly. Come say hello and introduce yourself. Can’t wait to meet you 😎
What we’re about
Common Blue Ridge Mountain activities with old and new friends through public and private events. Giving to and celebrating life in positive ways…Share what nourishes us socially, spiritually, physically or emotionally. You will find a variety of activities…
Volunteering, Hiking, Camping, Mtn Bike Rides, Motorcycle Riders, Fishing, Game Nights, Campfires, Karaoke, Visits to Local Establishment of all types (Food, Activities, Concerts, and much more).
Jack of the Wood : Sunday-Irish Session
Sundays
1 till who knows when?
Traditional Irish music is kept alive at Jack of the Wood with our unplugged Sunday session.
Jack of the Wood
95 Patton ave
Asheville, NC 28801
(828) 252.5445

Join us for our monthly poetry event featuring three poets and hosted by poet Mildred Barya. This month, we welcome Angela Narciso Torres, Caridad Moro-Gronlier, and Jehanne Dubrow.
Click here to RSVP. On the day of the event, we will send a reminder email with the link required to attend.
Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and to purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!
Angela Narciso Torres is the author of What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books 2021) Blood Orange, winner of the 2013 Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry, and the chapbook, To the Bone (Sundress Publications 2020). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, Missouri Review, Quarterly West, Cortland Review, and Poetry Northwest. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She won the 2019 Yeats Poetry Prize (W.B. Yeats Society of New York), and New City magazine named her one of Chicago’s Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently resides in San Diego. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry. Read more: https://www.angelanarcisotorres.com
“What Happens is Neither/ the end nor the beginning. /Yet we’re wired to look for signs,” offers the speaker of Angela Narciso Torres’ latest collection, which approaches motherhood, aging, and mourning through a series of careful meditations. In music, mantra, and prayer, Torres explores the spaces in and around grief—in varying proximity to it and from different vantage points. She writes both structurally formal poems that enfold the emotionality of loss and free verse that loosens the latch on memory and lets us into the sensory worlds of the speaker’s childhood and present. In poems set in two countries and homes, Torres considers what it means to leave a mark, vanish, and stay in one place. In a profound act of recollection and preservation, Torres shows us how to release part of ourselves but remain whole.
Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera, winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Florida (Texas Review Press 2021) and the chapbook Visionware (Finishing Line Press 2009). She is a Contributing Editor of Grabbed: Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day. Moro-Gronlier is the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry. Her work has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, The Best of the Net and two Lambda Literary Awards. Her recent work can be found at The Best American Poetry Blog, West Trestle Review, Literary Mama, The Sextant Review, Limp Wrist Review and others. A career educator, she is an English professor at FIU and MDC in Miami, FL where she resides with her family. Read more: http://www.caridadmoro.com/about-me.html
“An unflinching, delicious, and fierce anthem to Cuban-American and queer identities, Tortillera reclaims the homophobic slur of its title, engaging and subverting the canonical tradition of the love poem. Language, in its topographies and powers and failures, lies at the heart of these poems’ investigations: Moro writes, “of loss / the third language / we speak at home.” Tortillera confronts ‘poverty’s rumble,’ familial connections, sometimes fraught, sometimes endearingly tender. ‘Sifting through the rubble’ of fragmented romantic and parental relationships, the book is brilliant in its critique of beauty standards and machismo. I love Caridad Moro’s work, which reverberates with flavors of Miami—guarapo, harina con huevo frito, yuca, lechón—these are poems I admire and applaud, poems I read and reread with a ferocious appetite.” —Jenny Molberg, author of Refusal
Jehanne Dubrow is the author of nine poetry collections, including most recently, Wild Kingdom (LSU Press, 2021), as well as a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her previous poetry collections are Simple Machines, American Samizdat, Dots & Dashes, The Arranged Marriage, Red Army Red, Stateside, From the Fever-World, The Hardship Post, and a chapbook, The Promised Bride. Jehanne’s poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Poetry, Southern Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, and The New England Review. Her work has been featured by American Life in Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, Fresh Air, The Academy of American Poets, as well as on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. She is the founding editor of the national literary journal, Cherry Tree, and a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas. Read more: http://jehannedubrow.com/books/
Wild Kingdom explores the world of academia, examining this strange landscape populated by faculty, administrators, and students. Using what she calls “received academic forms,” Jehanne Dubrow crafts poems that recall the language of academic documents such as syllabi, grading rubrics, and departmental minutes. “Honor Board Hearing,” a series of prose poems, depicts challenges frequently faced by undergraduates, offering fictionalized accounts of cases involving plagiarism, theft, sexual assault, and substance abuse.

Call it “musical comedy heaven” (Rolling Stone). Call it “the most uproarious new musical in years!” (The Hollywood Reporter). Call it Tootsie!
This laugh-out-loud love letter to the theater tells the story of Michael Dorsey, a talented but difficult actor who struggles to find work until one show-stopping act of desperation lands him the role of a lifetime. Featuring a hilarious Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is “a joyful delight” (The Washington Post) that’s “so packed with punchlines, it should be called a jokebox musical!” (Bloomberg). “In these turbulent times, when the world seems out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” raves Rolling Stone. “Tootsie is it!”

Darren Nicholson Band is a group of Appalachian musicians who have common respect for and love of American acoustic music. There are GRAMMY and award-winning musicians in this band, and the members each have long track records as credible, national performers; including performances at Carnegie Hall and the Grand Ole Opry. They are known for creatively blending Bluegrass, Folk, Gospel, and Swing, into a new American acoustic music experience. Darren was recently given the “key to the city” in Canton, NC where he was honored for his musical and civic contributions to the community. Recently off Five national #1 songs and more than a dozen top-ten songs, 5 IBMA nominations, 3 IBMA Wins Including Album of the Year, Darren is excited to announce a handful of special dates with some bluegrass all-stars.
Come enjoy an evening of live music, food and drinks at the Isis Music Hall. Reservations are highly recommended.
This concert will also be Live Streamed from the Isis Music Hall Facebook Page

White Horse Black Mountain presents Ash Devine performing music of the Carter Family, plus Appalachian folk songs, old timey country blues, and ballad versions from the Western NC region. In 2015 Ash Devine musically directed and starred as the legendary Maybelle Carter in the production of, Esley: The Life and Music of Leslie Riddle, a play about Leslie Riddle’s and the Carter Family’s musical collaborations. Devine has toured internationally as a singer-songwriter and Appalachian folk singer for over 15 years. In 2018, Ash accompanied a group of ballad singers to the Library of Congress for a performance. Ash’s music is influenced by her upbringing in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, her studies with award winning regional folk musicians such as Sheila Kay Adams, David Holt, Lisa Null, and Bobby MacMillon, and her travels with health care activist Patch Adams, M.D. .More about Ash Devine at www.ashdevine.net.
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COVID-19 vaccines are our best shot to bring back summer and get everyone safely back to the people, places and activities they love. So, we are launching the Bringing Summer Back initiative, a fun, flexible, community-centered approach to help every organization and individual stop the spread of COVID-19 by urging friends and neighbors to get vaccinated.
Bringing Summer Back will run during the following weeks:
- June 6-12
- June 20-26
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Register your organization below. Registered partners will receive an introductory toolkit of resources and materials—from flyers to stickers—to help the people in your community bring summer back. Access a detailed guide for ways to participate and download the toolkit as well.

Get ready to go wild at the library for our annual Summer Learning Program. Join us for Tails & Tales – an exploration of wildlife and fantastical folktales. We’ll have an activity sheet with lots of fun adventures for all ages. You can pick up a sheet at any library starting June 1, or download it HERE. Check our calendar to find our most up to date list of programs all summer long.
The 2021 Summer Learning Program is open to young people, preschool through teen, with books and activities for every age. All library programs are free and open to children of all abilities. Come in and see what the library has for you!

KEY FACTS:
- In the past few days, hospital partners are reporting they are using blood at a much higher rate than normal. When demand is high, and the supply is critically low – that is a dangerous equation for the community.
- Because of the critically low supply, The Blood Connection (TBC) is now having to back-order blood products. This has affected 12 hospital partners so far.
- 48% of days this month, TBC DID NOT collect enough blood to cover hospitals’ needs. For comparison, in May of 2020 (during the pandemic) TBC collected enough to cover those needs 84% of the days.
- There is a high likelihood that TBC will have to start rationing blood by the end of the weekend.
- Heading into a holiday weekend – hospitals are stocking up their blood supply. TBC has already not been able to provide those products.
- The community is the ONLY solution to this dangerous problem. The blood supply for local hospitals is in the community’s hands.

Join us for Animoday! Every Monday all day. Listen to anime music, play anime games, watch anime, and talk anime!
There is so much strength in nonprofit collaboration and our work with WNC nonprofit Bounty & Soul is incredibly vital to our community as there is a clear intersection with our services.
An estimated 50.4 million people currently experience food insecurity and research has shown that prolonged periods of food insecurity may establish problematic eating patterns in both adults and children. For some of these food insecure individuals, disordered eating habits can progress into a fully developed eating disorder.
Please join Abbie on June 7th at 5:30pm – RSVP here by Noon Friday 6/4 to receive your Zoom link for this FREE introductory conversation about food security & food justice. In this hour-long session, Abbie will discuss food insecurity statistics and basics, what food insecurity can look like, how food insecurity and security intersects the work we are doing with eating disorders awareness & recovery, and resources & approaches to support people experiencing food insecurity.
Abbie Young, RD, LDN, RYT, CMI is a contractor with Bounty & Soul- a local food security, food justice, and community health & nutrition non-profit and an Outpatient Dietitian with Nutritious Thoughts- a group practice of Registered Dietitians who specialize in eating disorders, non-diet approaches, Health at Every Size, and more.
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COVID-19 vaccines are our best shot to bring back summer and get everyone safely back to the people, places and activities they love. So, we are launching the Bringing Summer Back initiative, a fun, flexible, community-centered approach to help every organization and individual stop the spread of COVID-19 by urging friends and neighbors to get vaccinated.
Bringing Summer Back will run during the following weeks:
- June 6-12
- June 20-26
-
Register your organization below. Registered partners will receive an introductory toolkit of resources and materials—from flyers to stickers—to help the people in your community bring summer back. Access a detailed guide for ways to participate and download the toolkit as well.

Get ready to go wild at the library for our annual Summer Learning Program. Join us for Tails & Tales – an exploration of wildlife and fantastical folktales. We’ll have an activity sheet with lots of fun adventures for all ages. You can pick up a sheet at any library starting June 1, or download it HERE. Check our calendar to find our most up to date list of programs all summer long.
The 2021 Summer Learning Program is open to young people, preschool through teen, with books and activities for every age. All library programs are free and open to children of all abilities. Come in and see what the library has for you!

KEY FACTS:
- In the past few days, hospital partners are reporting they are using blood at a much higher rate than normal. When demand is high, and the supply is critically low – that is a dangerous equation for the community.
- Because of the critically low supply, The Blood Connection (TBC) is now having to back-order blood products. This has affected 12 hospital partners so far.
- 48% of days this month, TBC DID NOT collect enough blood to cover hospitals’ needs. For comparison, in May of 2020 (during the pandemic) TBC collected enough to cover those needs 84% of the days.
- There is a high likelihood that TBC will have to start rationing blood by the end of the weekend.
- Heading into a holiday weekend – hospitals are stocking up their blood supply. TBC has already not been able to provide those products.
- The community is the ONLY solution to this dangerous problem. The blood supply for local hospitals is in the community’s hands.

The most ambitious race humankind has ever undertaken was masterminded in the shadows by two engineers on opposite sides of the Cold War: Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi officer living in the US, and Sergei Korolev, a Russian rocket designer once jailed for crimes against his country—and your textbooks probably never told you. Von Braun became an American hero, recognized the world over, while Korolev toiled in obscurity. These two brilliant rocketeers never met, but together they shaped the science of spaceflight and in the process, redefined modern warfare. From Stalin’s brutal gulag and Hitler’s concentration camps, to Cape Canaveral and beyond, their simultaneous quests pushed science—and human ingenuity—to the breaking point. The governments of the US and USSR concealed the more disturbing truths of their early space programs, in some cases for decades. In the Shadow of the Moon is the extraordinary, often hidden story of the space race, that takes you behind the scenes into the bitter rivalry that launched humankind to the moon.
Moderated by Kristi McMillan, director of learning & engagement and Whitney Richardson, associate curator with special guest, author Amy Cherrix. Presented in conjunction with Meeting the Moon.
Meeting each second Tuesday at 12pm, this monthly discussion is a place to exchange ideas about readings that relate to artworks and the art world, and to learn from and about each other. Pick up some tasty local fare at the Malaprop’s Café to make the most of your midday break! Books are available at Malaprop’s for a 10% discount.
Generous support for this program is provided by Art Bridges.

Join us (virtually) for another installment of LitCafé as author Dale Neal discusses his writing and most recent work Appalachian Book of the Dead.
Dale Neal is a novelist, teacher, and veteran journalist, living in Asheville about a mile from the banks of the French Broad River. He is the author of Appalachian Book of the Dead, a Southern Buddhist thriller that was a finalist for the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award.

We’re pleased to be part of the Reader Meet Writer series of online events hosted by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.
This event is free but registration is required. Click here to RSVP. Prior to the event we will send an email with the link required to complete your registration and attend on Zoom.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners returns with a witty and effervescent novel about what happens when two people with everything on the line are thrown together by science–or is it fate? P erfect for fans of The Rosie Project and One Plus One .
Single mom Jess Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. Raised by her grandparents–who now help raise her seven-year-old daughter, Juno–Jess has been left behind too often to feel comfortable letting anyone in. After all, her father’s never been around, her hard-partying mother disappeared when she was six, and her ex decided he wasn’t “father material” before Juno was even born. Jess holds her loved ones close, but working constantly to stay afloat is hard…and lonely.
But then Jess hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that’s predicted to change dating forever. Finding a soulmate through DNA? The reliability of numbers : This Jess understands.
At least she thought she did, until her test shows an unheard-of 98% compatibility with another subject in the database: GeneticAlly’s founder, Dr. River Peña. This is one number she can’t wrap her head around, because she already knows Dr. Peña. The stuck-up, stubborn man is without a doubt not her soulmate. But GeneticAlly has a proposition: Get to know him and we’ll pay you. Jess–who is barely making ends meet–is in no position to turn it down, despite her skepticism about the project and her dislike for River. As the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the “Diamond” pairing that could make GeneticAlly a mint in stock prices, Jess begins to realize that there might be more to the scientist–and the science behind a soulmate–than she thought.
Funny, warm, and full of heart, The Soulmate Equation proves that the delicate balance between fate and choice can never be calculated.
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Dating You / Hating You, Autoboyography, Love and Other Words, Roomies, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, My Favorite Half-Night Stand, and The Unhoneymooners. You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com, @ChristinaLauren on Instagram, or @ChristinaLauren on Twitter.

OUTDOOR SHOW
Join us on Tuesday nights for Magnetic’s signature variety show. There will be an exciting mix of comedy, music, theatre, dance, magic and more! Smoky Park Supper Club is offering us their beautiful outdoor venue, and will be selling food and drinks. The event is BYOC (bring your own chair), and we will, of course, be following strict Covid safety protocols. We can’t wait to see you there!

Join us Tuesday nights, beginning April 13th, as The Magnetic Theatre teams up with the wizards at Smoky Park Supper Club to host a live, outdoor variety show. We’ll be filling Smoky Park’s gorgeous, riverside outdoor space with comedy, theatre, music and so much more.
There will be food and beverages available for purchase.
- This is a BYOC (Bring-Your-Own-Chair) event.
- In accordance with safety guidelines this show will be staged outdoors, with mask and social distancing protocols enforced. There will also be temperature checks and COVID waivers that need to be signed by each attendee at the gate.
- Please arrive at least 15 minutes before the 7pm showtime.
- We do require that masks be worn at all times unless you are actively eating or drinking.

KEY FACTS:
- In the past few days, hospital partners are reporting they are using blood at a much higher rate than normal. When demand is high, and the supply is critically low – that is a dangerous equation for the community.
- Because of the critically low supply, The Blood Connection (TBC) is now having to back-order blood products. This has affected 12 hospital partners so far.
- 48% of days this month, TBC DID NOT collect enough blood to cover hospitals’ needs. For comparison, in May of 2020 (during the pandemic) TBC collected enough to cover those needs 84% of the days.
- There is a high likelihood that TBC will have to start rationing blood by the end of the weekend.
- Heading into a holiday weekend – hospitals are stocking up their blood supply. TBC has already not been able to provide those products.
- The community is the ONLY solution to this dangerous problem. The blood supply for local hospitals is in the community’s hands.

KEY FACTS:
- In the past few days, hospital partners are reporting they are using blood at a much higher rate than normal. When demand is high, and the supply is critically low – that is a dangerous equation for the community.
- Because of the critically low supply, The Blood Connection (TBC) is now having to back-order blood products. This has affected 12 hospital partners so far.
- 48% of days this month, TBC DID NOT collect enough blood to cover hospitals’ needs. For comparison, in May of 2020 (during the pandemic) TBC collected enough to cover those needs 84% of the days.
- There is a high likelihood that TBC will have to start rationing blood by the end of the weekend.
- Heading into a holiday weekend – hospitals are stocking up their blood supply. TBC has already not been able to provide those products.
- The community is the ONLY solution to this dangerous problem. The blood supply for local hospitals is in the community’s hands.



New York Times bestselling author Denise Kiernan talks with Courtney Lilly, showrunner and Executive Producer of the hit show “black•ish.” Click here to attend on crowdcast.

Like most of our events, this event is free, but registration is required. Click here to RSVP for this event. Prior to the event the link required to attend will be emailed to registrants.
If you decide to attend and to purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!
Irene, a lonely nineteen-year-old in rural North Carolina, works long nights at the local pool hall, serving pitchers and dodging drunks. One evening, her hilarious, magnetic coworker Luce invites her on a joy ride through the mountains to take revenge on a particularly creepy customer. Their adventure not only spells the beginning of a dazzling friendship, it seduces both girls into the mysterious world of pills and the endless hustles needed to fund the next high.
Together, Irene and Luce run nickel-tossing scams at the county fair and trick dealers into trading legit pharms for birth-control pills. Everything is wild and wonderful until Luce finds a boyfriend who wants to help her get clean. Soon the two of them decide to move away and start a new, sober life in Florida––leaving Irene behind.
Told in a riveting dialogue between the girls’ addicted past and their hopes for a better future, Bewilderness is not just a brilliant, funny, heartbreaking novel about opioid abuse, it’s also a moving look at how intense, intimate friendships can shape every young woman’s life.
Karen Tucker was born and raised in North Carolina. Her fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Yale Review Online, Tin House, Boulevard, Epoch, and elsewhere. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her partner and multiple cats.
Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He’s worked as a bartender in New Orleans and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story “The Monsters of Heaven” won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, NC, with his daughter.

