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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.
Join us for a relaxing ride through quiet countryside on your way to small town life in western North Carolina on the Tuckasegee River Excursion. Departing from Bryson City, this 4 hour excursion travels 32 miles round-trip to Dillsboro and back to the Bryson City Depot. Pass by the famous movie set of The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford!
Culley Holderfield discusses his debut novel, Hemlock Hollow, with fellow North Carolina writer Dale Neal, author of Appalachian Book of the Dead.
This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited number of seats are available to attend the event in-store. The event is free but 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.
This event includes a book signing. If you would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, use the order comments field when you order below to request a signed copy and tell us to whom the book should be personalized.
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!
Hemlock Hollow
“Past and present, love and loss intertwine in a magical mountain hollow. Holderfield’s love of place shines in his sensitive descriptions while his storytelling enthralls the reader.” —Vicki Lane, author of And the Crows Took Their Eyes
Caroline McAlister, college professor and life-long skeptic, is reeling from the loss of her father and her marriage. Her once promising career has come to a standstill. When her father bequeaths the family cabin to her, it comes with a ghost who haunted her childhood. When she discovers a century-old journal in the attic, she awakens the voice of Carson Quinn. The journal reveals Carson’s love for the same hollow that enthralled Caroline growing up. A little sleuthing uncovers rumors that the kind, curious boy in the journal grew up to murder his brother. Caroline plunges into the project of exonerating Carson, only to find herself in the throes of a personal past she’s spent her life trying to avoid. Hemlock Hollow is about how we forever haunt the places we love and how they haunt us in return.
Culley Holderfield learned to love storytelling on the porch of a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, he ventured to South America, Africa, and Europe. When not writing or working in community development finance, he spends his time hiking, paddling, and pondering in the outdoors. His short stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of publications. Hemlock Hollow is his debut novel. He lives in Durham, NC.
Dale Neal is the author of the novel Kings of Coweetsee, forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in 2024. His previous novels, Appalachian Book of the Dead, The Half-Life of Home, and Cow Across America, are each set in the storied Blue Ridge Mountains. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Arts & Letters, Carolina Quarterly, Marlboro Review, and Crescent Review, among others. Previously, he was a prize-winning writer for the Asheville Citizen-Times. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, he has been awarded fellowships to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hambidge Center, and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland. He currently teaches fiction at the Lenoir-Rhyne University Graduate Center. A lifelong native of North Carolina, he now lives in Asheville.
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
Interested in joining a book club (or two) in the new year? This evening is for you!
This program will feature short presentations from representatives from a dozen local book clubs and some time to chat. Find the book club that best fits your interests and schedule.
Attend in-person at Pack Library or participate in an online viewing! No registration is required for the in-person session. To sign up for the online session, click here to register to receive the live stream link.
Featuring representatives from:
Asheville Art Museum
Buncombe County Public Libraries
Buncombe County Special Collections
Firestorm Bookstore & Cafe
Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe
North Carolina Arboretum
Thomas Wolfe House
Wilma Dykeman Legacy
and more!
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
This live streamed virtual event is free but registration is required. Please 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!
Decent People
In the still-segregated town of West Mills, North Carolina in 1976, enigmatic siblings Marian, Marva, and Lazarus Harmon are found shot to death in their home. The people of West Mills – on both sides of the canal that serves as the town’s color line – become swept up in gossip and accusations that have them taking a deeper look at their neighbors and loved ones. The crime is the first reported murder in the area in decades, but the white authorities don’t seem to have any interest in solving the case. As the case continues to go unsolved, questions swirl around the town: Why were the Harmons murdered? Was it about drugs, money or a romantic dispute? And most importantly, who killed them?
Ms. Jo Wright has just moved back to West Mills from New York City to retire and marry a childhood sweetheart, Olympus “Lymp” Seymore. When she discovers that the murder victims are Lymp’s half-siblings, and that Lymp is one of West Mills’ leading culprits, she sets out on a transformative mission to prove his innocence. As Jo begins to investigate those who might know the most about the Harmons’ deaths, she starts to discover darker secrets than she’d ever imagined, and a pattern of cover-ups of racism, homophobia, and medical misuse that could upend the reputations of many. With Decent People, Winslow has written another novel with the makings of a classic, crafting a remarkable story that covers difficult themes of shame, race, and money with compassion, insight, and grace, and making the community of West Mills come alive from the first page.
De’Shawn Charles Winslow’s first novel, In West Mills, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Lambda Literary Award, Publishing Triangle Award, and Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing. He has been featured as a “Writer to Watch” in The New York Times and one of the “Black Male Writers of Our Time” in T, The New York Times Style Magazine. He was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and now lives in Atlanta, GA.
Jonathan Parks-Ramage is a Los Angeles based novelist, screenwriter and journalist. His critically acclaimed debut novel, YES, DADDY, was named as one of the best queer books of 2021 by Entertainment Weekly, NBC News, The Advocate, Bustle, Lambda Literary, Goodreads, and more. The book is currently being adapted for television. His writing has been widely published in such outlets as VICE, Slate, OUT Magazine, W Magazine, Lit Hub, Atlas Obscura, Elle, Electric Literature and more. He is also an alumnus of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
A book club for home cooks, foodies, industry folks, and anyone in-between. We will be focusing on all sorts of food writing. Somethemes will be (but not limited to): food critics, chef memoirs, wine, food history, and food politics.
The Foodie group meets virtually on the last Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m. (EST), beginning in June 2022. Please email [email protected] for the Zoom meeting info.
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
The Book for January is ‘Bewilderment’ by Richard Powers
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain…
With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/books/review-bewilderment-richard-powers.html
This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited number of seats are available to attend the event in-store. The event is free but 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.
This event includes a book signing. If you would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, use the order comments field when you order below to request a signed copy and tell us to whom the book should be personalized.
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 Kudzu Queen
Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu–claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches–Mattie is ready. Mr. Cullowee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and capture the attentions of the Kudzu King. As she learns more about Cullowee, however, she discovers that he, like the kudzu he promotes, has a dark and predatory side. When she finds she is not the only one threatened, she devises a plan to bring him down. Based on historical facts, The Kudzu Queen unravels a tangle of sexuality, power, race, and kudzu through the voice of an irresistibly delightful (and mostly honest) narrator.
Mimi Herman is the author of The Kudzu Queen, Logophilia and A Field Guide to Human Emotions. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review, The Hollins Critic, Prime Number, and other journals. She has performed her fiction and poetry at Why There are Words, Symphony Space, and Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. Mimi is a member of the AWP Board of Directors, a Warren Wilson MFA alumna, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist and a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. She co-directs Writeaways writing workshops in France, Italy, Ireland and New Mexico.
Heather Newton’s short story collection McMullen Circle (Regal House 2022) was the finalist for the W.S. Porter prize. Her novel The Puppeteer’s Daughters was released by Turner Publishing in July 2022 and has been optioned by Sony Pictures 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.
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
Join us for a relaxing ride through quiet countryside on your way to small town life in western North Carolina on the Tuckasegee River Excursion. Departing from Bryson City, this 4 hour excursion travels 32 miles round-trip to Dillsboro and back to the Bryson City Depot. Pass by the famous movie set of The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford!
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
Join us for a relaxing ride through quiet countryside on your way to small town life in western North Carolina on the Tuckasegee River Excursion. Departing from Bryson City, this 4 hour excursion travels 32 miles round-trip to Dillsboro and back to the Bryson City Depot. Pass by the famous movie set of The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford!
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
Do you ever think about where and how your clothes are made? What about who makes them? Come see the inside operations of a local sewing studio that’s reinventing the modern day factory! On this 30 minute micro-tour, you will learn about Sew Co.’s sustainable and transparent business practices, hear about our production processes and client collaborations , and receive a 10% day-of discount on our in-house clothing brand Rite of Passage!
Join host and former 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 7pm on Zoom. Also meets the second Monday of every month at 7pm to discuss the film adaptations of the books we read. To learn more or join the club, email [email protected].
Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.
Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.
Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.
Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023
Books for Adults
Adult Fiction
Adult nonfiction
*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!
Picture books for families to share
Chapter books for older kids
Books for teens
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited number of seats are available to attend the event in-store. The event is free but 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.
This event includes a book signing. If you would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, use the order comments field when you order below to request a signed copy and tell us to whom the book should be personalized.
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!
In (Don’t) Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before, Peter Turchi combines personal narrative and close reading of a wide range of stories and novels to reveal how writers create the fiction that matters to us. Building on his much-loved Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, Turchi leads readers and writers to an understanding of how the intricate mechanics of storytelling–including shifts in characters’ authority, the subtle manipulation of images, careful attention to point of view, the strategic release of information, and even digressing from the (apparent) story–can create powerful effects.
Using examples from Dickens, Chekhov, and Salinger, and Twain to more contemporary writers including Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, E. L. Doctorow, Jenny Erpenbeck, Adam Johnson, Mohsin Hamid, Jai Chakrabarti, Yoko Ogawa, Richard Powers, Deborah Eisenberg, Olga Tokarczuk, Rachel Cusk, and Colson Whitehead, Turchi offers illuminating insights into the inner workings of fiction as well as practical advice for writers looking to explore their craft from a fresh angle beyond the fundamentals of character and setting, plot, and scene.
While these essays draw from decades of teaching undergraduate and graduate students, they also speak to writers working on their own. In “Out of the Workshop, into the Laboratory,” Turchi discusses how anyone can make the most of discussions of stories or novels in progress, and in “Reading Like a Writer” he provides guidelines for learning from writing you admire. Perhaps best of all, these essays by a writer the Houston Chronicle has called “one of the country’s foremost thinkers on the art of writing” are as entertaining as they are edifying, always reminding us of the power and pleasure of storytelling.
Peter Turchi has written and coedited several books on writing fiction, including Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, A Muse and a Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery, and Magic, A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft, and (Don’t) Stop Me if You’ve Heard This Before and Other Essays on Writing Fiction. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Story, the Alaska Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, and the Colorado Review, among other journals. He has received numerous accolades, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of Houston.
The club will meet virtually 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.
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.
Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.
Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.
Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.
Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023
Books for Adults
Adult Fiction
Adult nonfiction
*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!
Picture books for families to share
Chapter books for older kids
Books for teens
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
The Malaprop’s Book Club, hosted by Jay Jacoby, explores a diverse selection of fiction and nonfiction books determined by member suggestion. 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 the first Wednesday of every month at 7:00 PM. The club will meet virtually until further notice. To join the club, please email [email protected]
Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.
Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.
Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.
Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023
Books for Adults
Adult Fiction
Adult nonfiction
*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!
Picture books for families to share
Chapter books for older kids
Books for teens
Register for our Cuba Agroecology Tour!
April 4-13, 2023Want to learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation?
This is your opportunity to join our 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms! On our tour, we visit with farmers, NGOs, policymakers, and experts to learn about the history of Cuba, their transition to organic agriculture, and ongoing initiatives to support farmers and expand agroecological practices.
Connect to the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as a foundation for healing and justice. Tricia Hersey, aka The Nap Bishop, asks what it would be like to live in a well-rested world. Hersey casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted and our worth does not reside in how much we produce. Informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep-deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.
