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.
The Humanities Program at UNC Asheville invites you to a virtual panel of “Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Language and Storytelling.”
Featured panelists will include Sol Neely, Juan G. Sánchez Martínez, Gilliam Jackson aka Doyi, and Trey Adcock (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ, enrolled Cherokee Nation) – a group whose work and experience is intimately informed by and connected to Indigenous cultures of North and South America. Among other things, the panel will discuss some of the ways Indigenous cultures see and understand the world, how Indigenous languages reflect worldviews rooted in relationships, and how storytelling serves to communicate knowledge across generations.
Tune in to the panel on Zoom.
And later that afternoon, from 5 – 7 pm, students, staff and faculty are invited to attend an in-person fire circle at Mullen Park to engage in informal conversation around the themes of language, storytelling, and indigenous worldviews. These events are made possible with support from the Humanities Program, Center for Diversity Education, Center for Native Health, Key Center for Community Engaged Learning, Siwar Mayu, and assistance from CTL.
About the panelists:
Sol Neely, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is the director of composition at Heritage University (located on the Yakama nation). He earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University’s Philosophy & Literature program (2009), with specializations in Theory and Cultural Studies, Native American Literature and Critical Indigenous Studies, Composition Theory, Ethics, and Literary Studies. In 2012, Neely started a prison education program called The Flying University, bringing university students inside the prison for mutual and collaborative study.
Juan G. Sánchez Martínez grew up in Bakatá/Bogotá, Colombian Andes. He dedicates his creative and scholarly writing to Indigenous cultural expressions from Abiayala (the Americas.) His book of poetry, Altamar, was awarded in 2016 with the National Prize Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. He collaborates and translates for the online publication Siwar Mayu, A River of Hummingbirds. He is currently an Associate Professor of Languages and Literatures, and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville.
Gilliam Jackson aka Doyi is a full-blood Cherokee fluent speaker. He has led and developed several nonprofit organizations during almost 50 years of his professional life. He started teaching sixth grade and is currently teaching at the University of North Carolina Asheville and Stanford. Early in his professional career, he realized the need to preserve the history, language and culture of his isolated community. He has audio and video recorded several oral histories of the Snowbird Community. He is presently working part-time as Executive Director of Snowbird Cherokee Traditions, which operates a summer and after-school Cherokee Language Program.
Trey Adcock (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ, enrolled Cherokee Nation), PhD, is an associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and the director of American Indian & Indigenous Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He was named one of seven national Public Engagement Fellows in 2018-2019 by the Whiting Foundation for his work documenting a Bureau of Indian Affairs run day school in the TutiYi “Snowbird” Cherokee Community. Adcock’s work has been published in the Journal of American Indian Education, Teaching Tolerance and Readings in Race, Ethnicity and Immigration. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Native Health and sits on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Cherokee Studies.
|
Join us for the Enka-Candler History Book Club! We read historical fiction and non-fiction books. The next book for discussion is, “Dress Codes: How the laws of fashion made history” by Richard Thompson Ford. All newcomers are welcome. We will be meeting in the library community room. Books are available for pick up at the front desk. To register for this program please email [email protected] or call 250-4758. |
|
Join us for a book discussion hosted by the Friends of the Skyland/South Buncombe Library! The book club will be held virtually on Zoom for the month of February, due to health concerns and the extended Buncombe County mask mandate. Future months may be held either online or in-person — make sure to check this event calendar for updates! This month we will be reading Nomadland by Jessica Bruder. The book is available in both physical and digital editions through Buncombe County Public Libraries, and we will also have a few extra copies to borrow at the South Buncombe branch that you can stop by and sign out. From the publisher: From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads. On frequently traveled routes between seasonal jobs, Jessica Bruder meets people from all walks of life: a former professor, a McDonald’s vice president, a minister, a college administrator, and a motorcycle cop, among many others―including her irrepressible protagonist, a onetime cocktail waitress, Home Depot clerk, and general contractor named Linda May. In a secondhand vehicle she christens “Van Halen,” Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying Linda May and others from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, then moving on to the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy―one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive. Like Linda May, who dreams of finding land on which to build her own sustainable “Earthship” home, they have not given up hope. |
Order your copy of HER LAST AFFAIR below and you’ll receive a special code to virtually attend this live event at New York City’s Symphony Space!
You’ll also receive a signed bookplate and, if you’re in Asheville, you can pick up some popcorn (while supplies last).
A NIGHT FOR BOOKLOVERS! AMY RYAN, JOHN SEARLES & HER LAST AFFAIR
Academy Award-nominated actress, Amy Ryan, joins in what promises to be a fun and insightful conversation with New York Times bestselling author, John Searles. The evening is a celebration of the release of his much anticipated, genre-bending, new novel Her Last Affair, published by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers. Her Last Affair has been praised by critics as “a tense, intricately woven tale of heartbreak, retribution and redemption” (Publishers Weekly) and “a twisted thriller that explores despair and loneliness with cinematic flair.” (Kirkus). Amy Ryan starred in the film adaptation of Searles’s critically-acclaimed novel, Strange But True, currently streaming on HBO Max. The evening’s ticket price includes a signed copy of Her Last Affair.
New York Times bestselling and award-winning author, John Searles, is the author of HER LAST AFFAIR, to be published by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers on March 22, 2022. Praised as “a twisted thriller that explores loneliness and despair with cinematic flair…” (Kirkus) and “a tense, intricately woven tale of heartbreak, retribution and redemption,” (Publishers Weekly) HER LAST AFFAIR is a genre-bending read that tells the story of three seemingly separate, desperate characters, each of whom “makes a date” with a significant person from their past…to deadly effect. John’s previous novels— HELP FOR THE HAUNTED, STRANGE BUT TRUE, BOY STILL MISSING—have been voted best of the year or top picks by Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Salon and the American Library Association. He has written for written for the New York Times and Washington Post as well as appearing frequently on NBC’s Today show and CBS This Morning to discuss his favorite book selections.
Academy Award-nominated actress, Amy Ryan, is well-known for her work on the big and small screen alike, as well as her Tony-nominated work on stage. Ryan recently wrapped a starring role opposite Joaquin Phoenix in writer/director Ari Aster’s DISAPPOINTMENT BLVD for A24. She was last seen starring opposite Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez in Hulu’s ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. Some notable film credits include: WORTH, BIRDMAN, CLEAR HISTORY (all with Michael Keaton), LOST GIRLS, LATE NIGHT, STRANGE BUT TRUE, GONE BABY GONE, BRIDGE OF SPIES, WIN WIN, JACK GOES BOATING, CAPOTE, GREEN ZONE, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE, and KEANE Television credits include: THE WIRE, THE OFFICE, IN TREATMENT. BROAD CITY and HIGH MAINTENANCE. Her work onstage earned two Tony nominations for A Streetcar Named Desire and Uncle Vanya and an OBIE award for her performance in LOVE LOVE LOVE.
The Common Word Community Read, curated by New York Times bestselling author and fellow UNC Asheville alumnus, Wiley Cash ’00, brings the UNC Asheville community together to engage in a collective educational experience. Each semester, one book will serve as the focus of numerous virtual and in-person lectures and discussions that will allow participants to delve deeper into the text. Over the course of the academic year, participants will read one book each semester, gaining insights and sharing ideas in a welcoming and respectful environment. Learn more and pick up your copy of the spring 2022 community read selection: “The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home” by Denise Kiernan.
The Emmy Award-winning film America’s First Forest: Carl Schenck and the Asheville Experiment tells the story of how Carl Schenck, a German forester, came to America in 1895 to manage the forests at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Schenck not only helped restore the land there, but he also established the country’s first forestry school and helped launch the American conservation movement.
For more information, visit: giving.unca.edu/alumni/the-common-word-community-read/
This event is the second of three events for the Spring 2022 Common Word Community Read series. Additional events include a talk with Dan Pierce, professor of history, “What George Vanderbilt Saw: Asheville and the Western North Carolina Mountains in 1887 – 88” (February 8), and a visit from Denise Kiernan, author of “The Last Castle”, in conversation with Wiley Cash (April 26).
Community Expectations
As members of this community, we care about everyone. Faculty, staff, students, and visitors have a shared commitment to take the necessary precautions to avoid spreading COVID-19 while following all recommended health guidelines. Please see UNC Asheville’s Community Expectations. Masks are required of all students, faculty, staff, and visitors.
Accessibility
Find accessibility information for campus buildings at maps.unca.edu. For accessibility questions or to request event accommodations, please contact [email protected] or 828.250.3832.
Visitor Parking
Visitors must have a permit to park on campus — please visit the Transportation website to register.
CFL Speaker Event: Wholehearted Faith with Jeff Chu
Register for this free event HERE by Tuesday, March 1.
Books will be available for purchase from Malaprop’s at the event.
Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith. At the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness.
With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays that ask candid questions about the stories we’ve been told—and the stories we tell—about our faith, our selves, and our world. Several groups within the church will be reading and reflecting on this book. We will have a Wednesday evening group to discuss God’s grace and love and explore our questions about beauty, becoming, and belonging.
First Baptist Church’s Center for Faith and Life is also hosting a Wholehearted Faith Book Study on Wednesdays, February 9 through 23 at 6:00 p.m.
More information here or contact First Baptist Church at (828) 252-4781.
This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
If you decide to attend and 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!
The harvesting of wild American ginseng ( panax quinquefolium), the gnarled, aromatic herb known for its therapeutic and healing properties, is deeply rooted in North America, but nowhere has it played a more important role than in the southern and central Appalachian Mountains. Made possible by a trans-Pacific trade network that connected the region to East Asian markets, ginseng was but one of several medicinal Appalachian plants that entered international webs of exchange. As the production of patent medicines and botanical pharmaceutical products escalated in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, southern Appalachia emerged as the United States’ most prolific supplier of many species of medicinal plants. The region achieved this distinction due to both its biodiversity and the persistence of certain common rights that guaranteed widespread access to the forested mountainsides, regardless of who owned the land.
Following the Civil War, root digging and herb gathering became one of the most important ways landless and smallholding families earned income from the forest commons. This boom influenced class relations, gender roles, forest use, and outside perceptions of Appalachia, and it began a widespread renegotiation of common rights that eventually curtailed access to some plants such as ginseng.
Based on extensive research into the business records of mountain entrepreneurs, country stores, and pharmaceutical companies, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia is the first book to unearth the unique relationship between the Appalachian region and the global trade in medicinal plants. Historian Luke Manget expands our understanding of the gathering commons by exploring how and why Appalachia became the nation’s premier purveyor of botanical drugs in the late nineteenth century and how the trade influenced the way human residents of the region interacted with each other and with the forests around them.
Luke Manget is an assistant professor of history at Dalton State College in Dalton, Georgia. He is a contributor in Southern Communities: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Nineteenth-Century American South, edited by Steven E. Nash and Bruce E. Stewart.
Daniel S. Pierce is professor of history at the University of North Carolina Asheville. His books includeTar Heel Lightnin’: How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World, Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France, and Corn from a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains.
This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
If you decide to attend and 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!
The inspiring, little-known story of the poor Irish refugee couple who escaped famine, created a life together in a city hostile to Irish, immigrants, and Catholics, and launched the Kennedy dynasty in America. Written by the grandson of an Irish immigrant couple and based on first‑ever access to P.J. Kennedy’s private papers, The First Kennedys is a story of sacrifice and survival, resistance and reinvention: an American story.
Neal Thompson is a journalist and the author of five highly acclaimed books, including A Curious Man, Driving with the Devil, and the memoir Kickflip Boys. A former newspaper reporter, he has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Health, Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal and more. Neal has appeared on NPR, PBS, The Daily Show, CNN, Fox, TNT, The History Channel, and ESPN. He lives in Seattle with his family.
Denise Kiernan is an author, journalist, producer, and host of “CRAFT: Authors in Conversation.” Her latest book, We Gather Together, arrived winter 2020. Her last book, The Last Castle (Sept., 2017), was an instant New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback and was also a Wall Street Journal bestseller. She is also the author of The Girls of Atomic City, which is a New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and NPR bestseller and has been published in multiple languages. She lives in North Carolina.
Join host and Malaprop’s Bookseller Allison to dive into the wreck of the wily and wonderful world of science fiction, fantasy, weird fiction, speculative fiction, and literary horror with a healthy mix of underappreciated classic and contemporary books. Meets the last Monday of every month at 7 pm on Zoom. Also meets on the second Monday of every month at 7 pm to discuss the film adaptations of the books we read. Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading and contact the club host to join. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!
This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
If you decide to attend and 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!
Carry On meets Arthurian legend in this funny, subversive young adult fantasy about what happens after the chosen one wins the kingdom and has to get married to keep it…and to stay alive. Arek hadn’t thought much about what would happen after he completed the prophecy that said he was destined to save the Kingdom of Ere from its evil ruler. So now that he’s finally managed to (somewhat clumsily) behead the evil king (turns out magical swords yanked from bogs don’t come pre-sharpened), he and his rag-tag group of quest companions are at a bit of a loss for what to do next. As a temporary safeguard, Arek’s best friend and mage, Matt, convinces him to assume the throne until the true heir can be rescued from her tower. Except that she’s dead. Now Arek is stuck as king, a role that comes with a magical catch: choose a spouse by your eighteenth birthday, or wither away into nothing. With his eighteenth birthday only three months away, and only Matt in on the secret, Arek embarks on a desperate bid to find a spouse to save his life–starting with his quest companions. But his attempts at wooing his friends go painfully and hilariously wrong…until he discovers that love might have been in front of him all along.
F.T. Lukens is the author of In Deeper Waters and five young adult novels published through Interlude Press. Their book The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic was a 2017 Cybils Award finalist in YA Speculative Fiction, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Gold Winner for YA fiction, the Bisexual Book Award for Speculative Fiction, and on ALA’s 2019 Rainbow Book List. F.T. lives in North Carolina with their spouse, three kids, three dogs, and three cats.
Steven Salvatore is a gay, genderqueer author, writing professor, Mariah Carey lamb, and Star Wars fanatic. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. They currently live in Peekskill, New York, with their amazingly patient husband, whose name is also Steve. They are the author of CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY and AND THEY LIVED…. They are also the co-founder of Pride Book Fest.
Romance Book Club is a space to celebrate love in literature. Whether it’s set in early 1800s London, a distant planet years into the future, a fantasy world of magic, or our own contemporary universe, we are here for the stories that end with a happily-ever-after (or at least a happily-for-now).
Meetings will take place at 7:00 PM ET on the last Tuesday of each month via Zoom. Please visit the Romance Bookclub page for the monthly selection, and email Samantha at [email protected] for the link to join.
Due to Covid-19, we are posting Storytime on Instagram in lieu of an in-store event. Join us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/malapropsbookstore/ to tune into Miss Malaprop’s Storytime from your home.
Join us with your wee ones on Wednesdays at 10 am for classic and contemporary stories sure to enchant and entertain. Together, we’ll introduce children to the wonderful world of books! Recommended for ages 3-9.
This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited amount of seats available to attend the event in-store. Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.
If you decide to attend and 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!
About Chasm:
Two months have passed since Patch Collins narrowly escaped the Board, leaving her loved ones behind to navigate the escalating tensions in America. Patch finds herself in an unfamiliar world, struggling with her mental health, and surrounded by those who abandoned the very idea of American diplomacy long ago. When a familiar enemy resurfaces and she learns the previously unknown fate of a loved one, Patch must make a choice: stay and live a life of relative safety, or risk everything to expose the Board’s actions to the world.
Jacqui Castle is a professional freelance writer and novelist. She lives and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. Jacqui was selected as the 2020 Indie Author of the Year by the Indie Author Project(in collaboration with Library Journal and Biblioboard). Her debut novel, The Seclusion, is a Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award winner in Science Fiction and the winner of the North Carolina Author Project. The sequel to The Seclusion hits shelves on March 1, 2022. When not writing, Jacqui can be found consuming too much caffeine, and spending time with her husband and two children.
Rachael Sparks is a local Asheville author whose first novel, Resistant, was published in 2018, which was the same year that she met Jacqui here at Malaprops, and it was the beginning of a friendship peppered with pranks, bets, and an expanding group of author buddies. Rachael is a microbiologist with a background in transplants, who now leads marketing for a healthcare startup. She lives in North Asheville with her incredibly attractive and talented husband, her brilliant young daughter, and her amazing mother.
Damon Akins, Professor of History at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, will give a talk focused on the history of writing about Native California, Indigenous sovereignty, and settler colonialism. Atkins’ recent book (with William J. Bauer), “We Are The Land: A History Of Native California”, will serve as the backdrop for his remarks.
Register for the talk through Zoom
This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
If you decide to attend and to purchase 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!
Become the healthiest and happiest version of yourself using wellness tools designed specifically for BIPOC and LGBTQ folks.
The lack of BIPOC and LGBTQ representation in the fields of health and nutrition has led to repeated racist and unscientific biases that negatively impact the very people they purport to help. Many representatives of the increasingly popular body positivity movement actually add to the body image concerns of queer people of color by emphasizing cisgender, heteronormative, and Eurocentric standards of beauty. Few mainstream body positivity resources address the intersectional challenges of anti-Blackness, colorism, homophobia, transphobia, and generational trauma that are at the root of our struggles with wellness and self-care.
In Decolonizing Wellness A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self-Image, and Achieve Body Liberation, registered dietitian and nutritionist Dalia Kinsey will help readers to improve their health without restriction, eliminate stress around food and eating, and turn food into a source of pleasure instead of shame. A road map to body acceptance and self-care for queer people of color, Decolonizing Wellness is filled with practical eating practices, journal prompts, affirmations, and mindfulness tools. Ultimately, decolonizing nutrition is essential not only to our personal well-being but to our community’s well-being and to the possibility of greater social transformation. This is a body positivity and food freedom book for marginalized folks. It’s a guide to throwing out food rules in exchange for internal cues and adopting a self-love-based approach to eating. It’s about learning to trust our bodies and turning mealtime into a time for celebration and healing. It’s also a love letter to those of us who struggle with our bodies and a gentle plea for us to do the work it takes to accept, trust, and love ourselves.
Dalia Kinsey is a Registered Dietitian, Decolonized Wellness Coach, and the creator of the Body Liberation for All podcast. On a mission to spread joy, reduce suffering, and eliminate health disparities in the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community, Dalia rejects diet culture and teaches people to use nutrition as a self-care and personal empowerment tool to counter the damage of systemic oppression. Dalia works at the intersection of holistic wellness and social justice, continually creating wellness tools and resources that center the most vulnerable, individuals that hold multiple marginalized identities.
On Sunday, April 3, from 3-5pm ET, Serena Yang will kick off National Poetry Month. Serena is the New York City Youth Poet Laureate and a Finalist for the 2021 National Youth Poet Laureate. Her workshop aims to engage youth to express themselves through poetry and is best suited for ages 15-25.
It is hosted by the Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara and will use Zoom for the virtual connection.
Serena was born in Singapore and raised in Queens, she is a first-generation Chinese American immigrant, and her work reflects her myriad identities. She performed at the 2021 NYC COVID Memorial Ceremony alongside the New York City Mayor & The NY Philharmonic, and has appeared on NPR as well as in the Washington Post and the New Yorker Magazine. She approaches art in all its mediums as the fire, fuel and food for change, and believes imagination and storytelling are critical to writing.
Chat with other book lovers about this month’s book selection.
Interested in reading ahead? Here’s what we have coming up in the next few months!
– November- “Once Upon A River” Diane Setterfield
– December- “Dutch House” Ann Patchett
– January- “Mexican Gothic” Silvia Moreno-Garcia
– February- “The Rose Code” Kate Quinn
To reserve your copy of the book, visit buncombe.nccardinal.org or swing by the library to pick one up from the book clubs holds shelf.
To join the book club email [email protected] or call us at 250-4758.
Our Ideal Volunteer Tutor
The ideal volunteer tutor is someone seeking to make a one-year commitment of two hours per week to help someone else make the change of a lifetime. For our volunteer tutors, an education background is helpful, but not necessary. The most important qualities are patience, an open mind, and resourcefulness. Tutors also need to be non-judgmental and sensitive to cultural differences. A GED or high school diploma is required. Ideal tutors enjoy seeing concrete outcomes from their efforts and sharing in the life-changing successes of others. See our full tutor position description here.
Learn more about Literacy Together’s volunteer roles!
Five Steps to Become a Tutor
1. Contact Literacy Together. Sign up online, call (828)254-3442, or email [email protected] to let us know you are interested in becoming a volunteer. We will get back to you within two business days.
2. Attend orientation. We host two volunteer orientation meetings a month. Sign up online, or send an email to [email protected].
3. Attend tutor training. Sign up for training at the end of the orientation session. Here you can see the dates of our training.
4. Get matched with a student. The program director for your chosen program will match you with a student or small group of students who corresponds to your preferences. The program director will set the date, time, and location of your first meeting. After that, you will schedule your tutoring sessions directly with your student.
5. Start tutoring. Meet with your student(s) for at least two hours per week for a minimum of six months (Adult Literacy GED track), a year (ESOL, Adult Literacy Basic Skills track), and a school year (Youth Literacy). Share your success stories with us, and attend periodic in-service training to freshen up your skills.
This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
If you decide to attend and to purchase 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!
From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows.
Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
Menachem Kaiser holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and was a Fulbright Fellow to Lithuania. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, New York, BOMB, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Join host and Malaprop’s Bookseller Patricia Furnish to discuss a range of books across true crime and public affairs. The club meets the first Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. Click here to learn more about the club, view important news, and find the pick for this month.
Malaprop’s is pleased to partner with UNC Press and the North Carolina Arboretum to present this event. Introductions will be provided by UNC Press Advancement Council member Kirk Brown.
This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
If you decide to attend and to purchase 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!
The American South is famous for its astonishingly rich biodiversity. In this book, Georgann Eubanks takes a wondrous trek from Alabama to North Carolina to search out native plants that are endangered and wavering on the edge of erasure. Even as she reveals the intricate beauty and biology of the South’s plant life, she also shows how local development and global climate change are threatening many species, some of which have been graduated to the federal list of endangered species.
Why should we care, Eubanks asks, about North Carolina’s Yadkin River goldenrod, found only in one place on earth? Or the Alabama canebrake pitcher plant, a carnivorous marvel being decimated by criminal poaching and a booming black market? These plants, she argues, are important not only to the natural environment but also to southern identity, and she finds her inspiration in talking with the heroes–the botanists, advocates, and conservationists young and old–on a quest to save these green gifts of the South for future generations. These passionate plant lovers caution all of us not to take for granted the sensitive ecosystems that contribute to the region’s long-standing appeal, beauty, and character.
Georgann Eubanks is a writer and Emmy-winning documentarian. Her most recent books are The Month of Their Ripening: North Carolina Heritage Foods through the Year and Saving the Wild South:The Fight for Native Plants on the Brink of Extinction.
Longtime conservationist Jeff Michael has served as director of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and Wildacres Leadership Initiative, and as executive director of the Land Trust for Central North Carolina (now Three Rivers Land Trust) and the Yadkin-Pee Dee Lakes Project (now Central Park NC). He has also served on the boards of Morrow Mountain State Park Advisory Committee and Preservation North Carolina, among others. He has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and master’s in Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also holds a J.D. from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law.
Book it over to Black Mountain for this exciting opportunity. The Friends of the Black Mountain Library will be having a pop-up used book sale on Saturday, April 9, outside the library. There will be books for all ages at great prices. All proceeds benefit the Friends of The Black Mountain Library.
The club will meet virtually during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you are interested in attending, please email [email protected] for instructions about how to attend the club event.
Join host Tena Frank for Malaprop’s Mystery Book Club! Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!
The club meets at Malaprop’s on the second Monday of every month at 7:00 pm.
This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to RSVP. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event. Pre-order Behold Our Magical Garden from Malaprop’s to get a signed and personalized copy. Please request signing and/or personalization in the “comments” section during checkout.
If you decide to attend and 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!
Witty and inspiring, Allan Wolf’s upbeat poems are poised to cultivate a new crop of gardeners, aided by Daniel Duncan’s bountiful illustrations. There’s a lot more to gardens than meets the eye! In this collection of buoyant poems filled with fun facts, young nature enthusiasts and budding gardeners are called on to help solve a mystery by the compost bin, join a Wild West-style standoff between some good bugs and a few bad ones, interview the sun to find out what happens when it drinks a glass of water, and learn the fancy names of plants to spice up dinner conversation. They’ll be spurred to grab their own gardening tools, drop in some seeds, encounter a few insects, gather fresh vegetables, and find a whole lot of magic. Allan Wolf’s playful poems and Daniel Duncan’s whimsically detailed, welcoming illustrations combine in a charming celebration of the many wonders and lessons to be learned from a school garden. For further inspiration, engaging notes on the poems and an author’s note on jotting down observations can be found in the back matter.
Allan Wolf is the author of many award-winning books for children and teens, including No Buddy Like a Book, The Day the Universe Exploded My Head, The Blood-Hungry Spleen and Other Poems About Our Parts, and The Blanket Where Violet Sits. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
If you decide to attend and to purchase 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!
Please call Malaprop’s at 828-254-6734 or email [email protected] to order Furnace Creek.
Taking its inspiration from Great Expectations, this novel teases us with the question of what Pip might have been like had he grown up in the American South of the 1960s and 1970s and faced the explosive social issues–racial injustice, a war abroad, womenís and gay rights, class struggle–that galvanized the world in those decades. A guilty encounter with an escaped felon, a summer spent working for an eccentric man with a mysterious past, conflicted erotic feelings for his employerís niece and nephew–these events set the stage for a journey of sexual and moral discovery that takes Newt Seward to New England, Rome, and Paris–all before returning home to confront his lifeís many expectations and disappointments. Deftly combining elements of coming-of-age story, novel of erotic discovery, Southern Gothic fiction, and detection-mystery thriller, FURNACE CREEK leaps the frame of Dickensí masterpiece to provide a contemporary meditation on the perils of desire, ambition, love, loss, and family.
Joseph Boone has written a page-turning novel, a spirited American retelling of an English classic. The American South is our own Dickensian England, and Boone brings both worlds vividly alive with his ebullient prose. A joyously ambitious debut! – Marianne Wiggins, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominee for Evidence of Things Unseen, Joe Boone’s FURNACE CREEK is a funny, moving, and true rendition of everybody’s story: surviving our childhoods, which can be uniquely challenging if you’re Southern, and queer. Boone is a natural novelist, and FURNACE CREEK is a genuine accomplishment.–Michael Cunningham
Joseph Allen Boone grew up in the piedmont foothills of North Carolina and earned his BA from Duke University, where Reynolds Price numbered among his creative writing teachers. Now a professor of English at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, he is the author of three works of non-fiction, a musical adaptation of Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man, and a forthcoming short story collection from BSPG, Conditions of Precarity. Furnace Creek, his debut novel, was a finalist in four international competitions.
Elizabeth Kostova is the author of the international bestseller The Historian. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress.
The Prosperity Gospel: Portraits of the Great Recession is a project done in collaboration with the writer, Keith Flynn, and photographer, Charter Weeks, documenting the effects of the Great Recession on the individual lives of people living in Appalachia, within a 75 mile radius of Asheville, North Carolina. The book is organized in four parts: Profiles of the Working Poor, Working Around It, One Crisis from Catastrophe, and Where the Money Goes. There is a heartbreaking and clear understanding throughout that there is a fluidity between these categories, that economically speaking, the safety net is full of holes. Along the way, Flynn and Weeks met a roster of proud Appalachian people including couples, religious believers, Native Americans, lovers, outlaws, small business owners, parents and preachers, struggling to imagine a future for themselves, doing what it takes to keep hope alive. But Prosperity Gospel is much more than a book of “hard luck stories.”
The authors are not ascribing the fortunes of their subjects to good or bad luck; resisting that demoralizing shrug, they lay blame squarely where it belongs: on structural inequities that reached catastrophic proportion in the lives of these individuals. This is a book about people surviving the massive plundering of the American economy that brought about the Great Recession of 2008. Prosperity Gospel is not about what happened in 2008, however, but about its consequences, about what is still happening, now: in a word — if the word is used honestly — history, a history that leads on to continuing struggle and back to a still unpunished crime: the mendacity, thievery, and fraud of politicians, banks, and corporations.
Moderated by author Keith Flynn, and Jay Bonner, Associate Head, Asheville School. Participants will gather in-person; moderators will Zoom in virtually.
DISCUSSION BOUND
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. Books are available at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café for a 10% discount. To add your name to our Discussion Bound mailing list, click here or call 828.253.3227 x133.
This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited amount of seats available to attend the event in-store. Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.
If you decide to attend and 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!
It’s modern day in the New South City of Charlotte, North Carolina, when three retirees at the Independence Retirement Community, a/k/a The Indie, team up to investigate two mysteries related to the death of a 96-year-old resident. Why was his manuscript about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence missing when they found his body? And why did his handwritten will dated the day he died disinherit his beloved granddaughter (his only heir), and leave his $50 million fortune to Sue Ellen Parker, the most despised resident at the Indie?
At the urging of Chuck Yeager Alexander, an optimistic soul who loves historical conspiracies, and Harriet Keaton, a former businesswoman with an extreme dislike of Sue Ellen Parker, Craig Travail, a trial lawyer recently ousted from his law firm after 40 years, reluctantly goes to court to challenge the dead man’s will for the granddaughter. This decision sets in motion a series of dangerous events that could lead the threesome to discover the answer to a colonial mystery that has evaded historians for more than two centuries.
Landis Wade is a recovering trial lawyer, dog and sports lover, host of Charlotte Readers Podcast, speaker, teacher, moderator, fly-fisherman and author of books and stories whose third book—The Christmas Redemption— won the Holiday category of the 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards. He won the 2016 North Carolina State Bar short story contest for The Deliberation and received awards for his non-fiction pieces, The Cape Fear Debacle and First Dance. His short work also has appeared in Writersdigest.com, The Charlotte Observer, News and Observer, Flying South, Fiction on the Web and in anthologies by Pamlico Writers’ Group, High Country Writers and the Daniel Boone Footsteps Personal Story Publishing Project.
Heather Newton is the author of the short story collection McMullen Circle (Regal House 2022), finalist for the W.S. Porter prize. Her novel The Puppeteer’s Daughters is forthcoming from Turner Publishing in July 2022 and has been optioned for television. Her novel Under The Mercy Trees (HarperCollins 2011) won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, was chosen by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads Selection and named an “Okra Pick” by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. A practicing attorney, she teaches creative writing for UNC-Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program and is co-founder and Program Manager for the Flatiron Writers Room writers’ center in Asheville. www.heathernewton.net https://www.flatironwritersroom.com
|
Join us for a 30 minute discussion of Vicki Lane’s And the Crows Took Their Eyes, followed by a short break, then an hour-long reading with the author. Lane’s novel, which explores the perspectives of several people tied to Madison County’s Shelton Laurel Massacre of 1863, was a finalist for the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. 
Our book club will meet in person for a discussion of Even as We Breath by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
North Carolina Reads is North Carolina Humanities’ statewide book club for 2022. North Carolina Reads features five books that explore issues of racial, social, and gender equality and the history and culture of North Carolina.
The April book poses critical questions about how North Carolinians view their role in helping to form a more just and inclusive society.
We will be joined by Cori Anderson, Associate Director of Key Center for Community Engaged Learning at UNC-A as she discusses life in Asheville and Cherokee in the time period of the book and leads us through the NC Humanities discussion questions.
How to participate:
Libraries, community groups, and individuals across North Carolina are encouraged to read along with North Carolina Humanities.
Copies of the book are available for pickup at the Swannanoa Library or may be requested through the library holds system. Please join us early. We are limiting the number in our inside space.
Click here to RSVP for this event. 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 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!
Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave is Bill Kopp’s chronicle of the groundbreaking independent record label founded by Howie Klein & Chris Knab, featuring the stories of Romeo Void, Red Rockers, Translator, Wire Train, Roky Erickson, The Nuns, Pearl Harbor and Explosions, and nearly two dozen other bands. Based on nearly 100 interviews with the artists, industry execs, producers, friends, rivals, onlookers, journalists and hangers-on, Disturbing the Peace also features hundreds of photos and memorabilia from the personal archives of those who were there.
Bill Kopp
With a background in marketing and advertising, Bill Kopp got his professional start writing for Trouser Press. After a stint as Editor-in-Chief for a national music magazine, Bill launched the online zine Musoscribe in 2009, and has published new content every business day since then (and every single day since 2018). The interviews, essays, and reviews on Musoscribe reflect Bill’s keen interest in American musical forms, most notably rock, jazz, and soul. His work features a special emphasis on reissues and vinyl. Bill’s work also appears in many other outlets both online and in print. He regularly hosts lecture/discussions on artists and albums of historical importance, and is a frequent guest on music-focused radio programs and podcasts. He also researches and authors liner notes for album reissues — more than 30 to date — and co-produced a reissue of jazz legend Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s final album. His first book, Reinventing Pink Floyd, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2018, and in paperback in 2019. Disturbing the Peace is his second book.