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.

Sunday, April 18, 2021
The Great Smokies Writing Program
Apr 18 @ 3:00 pm
Online w/ Malaprop's

Submit this form to RSVP for the Writers at Home reading series with The Great Smokies Writing Program online on Sunday, April 18 at 3 PM ET.

This month we will hear readings from participants in GSWP Poetry Master Class.

Like most of our events, this event is free. We encourage you to support our work and keep more dollars in our community by purchasing books from Malaprop’s. You may also support us by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Monday, April 19, 2021
Voices of the River: Art + Poetry Contest
Apr 19 all-day
online w/ RiverLink

Create a river-inspired work of art for our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. You can make 2D or 3D creations, write poems, haikus or short stories, or even record a dance, skit or song that you create. Winners will receive a variety of prizes donated by local businesses and organizations.

Show Us What the River Means to You!

Every spring we host our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. We ask kids to use the river as a source of inspiration to showcase their creativity. Each year we are so amazed by the talent of these young artists, poets, and performers. Submissions can include 2D and 3D works in various mediums, poems and creative writings, and video compositions of songs, dances, or skits. Winners are selected by a council of judges made up of local artists, writers, and community leaders. Many generous businesses also donate prizes for winners from each age group and category.

This year we want you to show us “How has the river helped you during this time of isolation?”

All entries are due by Thursday April 22nd

Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 19 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Voices of the River: Art + Poetry Contest
Apr 20 all-day
online w/ RiverLink

Create a river-inspired work of art for our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. You can make 2D or 3D creations, write poems, haikus or short stories, or even record a dance, skit or song that you create. Winners will receive a variety of prizes donated by local businesses and organizations.

Show Us What the River Means to You!

Every spring we host our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. We ask kids to use the river as a source of inspiration to showcase their creativity. Each year we are so amazed by the talent of these young artists, poets, and performers. Submissions can include 2D and 3D works in various mediums, poems and creative writings, and video compositions of songs, dances, or skits. Winners are selected by a council of judges made up of local artists, writers, and community leaders. Many generous businesses also donate prizes for winners from each age group and category.

This year we want you to show us “How has the river helped you during this time of isolation?”

All entries are due by Thursday April 22nd

Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 20 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

irtual Tuesday Night Shamanic Practices by Rising Fire Shamanism
Apr 20 @ 10:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Online w/ Awakening Asheville

Hosted by Rising Fire Shamanism
Cultivate presence in your life through direct experience. Join us to learn and use an ancient healing technique during each class.

About this Event
*** JOIN US FOR POWERFUL PRACTICES FROM WHEREVER YOU ARE!***
In response to the economic difficulties brought on by COVID, Rising Fire Shamanism is offering our Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class for free beginning in February 2021 going through December 2021.
Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class helps cultivate presence in your life through shamanic practices, sacred play, meditation, and centering techniques.

Learn how to transform and release dense energy from your body, mind and energy field. We do this while strengthening our refined energy, or “sami.” The idea is to build our living energy, our “kausay,” with mindfulness. We focus on different methods of experiencing directly each week to build or to enhance the foundation of your personal work.

This class is for the curious and those who would like to refine their personal practices. You will have the opportunity do something different each week; shamanic breathwork, journeying, meditation and more.

Learn more and register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tuesday-night-shamanic-practices-tickets-112043045766?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch

Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Voices of the River: Art + Poetry Contest
Apr 21 all-day
online w/ RiverLink

Create a river-inspired work of art for our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. You can make 2D or 3D creations, write poems, haikus or short stories, or even record a dance, skit or song that you create. Winners will receive a variety of prizes donated by local businesses and organizations.

Show Us What the River Means to You!

Every spring we host our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. We ask kids to use the river as a source of inspiration to showcase their creativity. Each year we are so amazed by the talent of these young artists, poets, and performers. Submissions can include 2D and 3D works in various mediums, poems and creative writings, and video compositions of songs, dances, or skits. Winners are selected by a council of judges made up of local artists, writers, and community leaders. Many generous businesses also donate prizes for winners from each age group and category.

This year we want you to show us “How has the river helped you during this time of isolation?”

All entries are due by Thursday April 22nd

Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 21 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

How to Transcend The Five Obstacles to Self Love – Jerry Donoghue
Apr 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Online

Jerry Donoghue is founder of the Asheville Compassionate Communication Center and the Inner Presence Coaching Institute in Asheville, NC. Jerry is a Master Spiritual Coach who specializes in training couples to be more compassionate with themselves and each other through his courses and private coaching. He also trains helping professionals in gentle, non-invasive, non-prescriptive approaches to support that rely on the clients’/students’ innate intelligence. He draws on his many years of teaching people compassion communication, self-compassion, and nondual awareness work to create this dynamic Inner Presence Inquiry Work. He shows us in a totally practical and deeply experiential way, how to fully enter, lovingly embrace and be present to the disowned, painful and rejected parts of ourselves. www.ashevilleccc.com

What we’re about

The Asheville Wisdom Exchange is a sacred space for the non-judgmental exchange of insight and wisdom in our quest to better express the Divine inherent within us. Topics vary weekly utilizing a combination of experts and open discussion in a unique and respectful format based upon the premise that we all can learn from each other. We welcome you to join us and share your voice in the uplifting of humanity.
We meet via Zoom every Wednesday from 7 – 8:15 p.m.
https://www.ashevillewisdomexchange.org

Thursday, April 22, 2021
Voices of the River: Art + Poetry Contest
Apr 22 all-day
online w/ RiverLink

Create a river-inspired work of art for our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. You can make 2D or 3D creations, write poems, haikus or short stories, or even record a dance, skit or song that you create. Winners will receive a variety of prizes donated by local businesses and organizations.

Show Us What the River Means to You!

Every spring we host our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. We ask kids to use the river as a source of inspiration to showcase their creativity. Each year we are so amazed by the talent of these young artists, poets, and performers. Submissions can include 2D and 3D works in various mediums, poems and creative writings, and video compositions of songs, dances, or skits. Winners are selected by a council of judges made up of local artists, writers, and community leaders. Many generous businesses also donate prizes for winners from each age group and category.

This year we want you to show us “How has the river helped you during this time of isolation?”

All entries are due by Thursday April 22nd

Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 22 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Virtual Poetry Workshop with Carlene Kucharczyk
Apr 22 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Online w/ Carl Sandburg House

This workshop is open to writers of all skill levels and is a fun way to find inspiration from a new prompt or revise current work. Carlene was the 2018 Carl Sandburg Writer-in-Residence.
Sign up to attend the workshop at https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx…
Carlene Kucharczyk first came to the Carl Sandburg Home when she was taking a road trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway and camping in national parks. She loved it and knew she would one day apply to be the writer-in- residence. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry from North Carolina State University in 2015, where she taught creative writing as a graduate student. After the program, she taught expository writing at the Agricultural Institute at NC State.
In 2017, she was awarded the Henry David Thoreau Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She was also the recipient of a scholarship to The Frost Place Poetry Seminar. Her poetry and prose have been published or are forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, Atlanta Review, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Permafrost Magazine, and Strange Horizons. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has placed in the North Carolina State Poetry and Fiction contests. She currently works as a freelance copyeditor, and is originally from Connecticut.
Thanks to the Friends of Carl Sandburg, Inc. for their support of this program!
Friday, April 23, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 23 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Saturday, April 24, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 24 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Sunday, April 25, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 25 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Monday, April 26, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 26 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 27 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Celebrate National Poetry month with WNC poet and author Mildred Barya
Apr 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Black Mountain Library ONLINE

Poet Mildred Barya

 

Celebrate National Poetry month with WNC poet and author Mildred Barya.
Born in Uganda, Mildred is an Assistant Professor of English at UNCA, where she teaches poetry, fiction, hybrid writing, and world literature. Mildred has published numerous short stories for literary magazines and anthologies, as well as three books of poetry: Give me Room to Move My Feet, The Price of Memory after the Tsunami, and Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Saywhich won the Uganda National Award for Poetry Publication in 2002. She was awarded the Pan African Prize for Africana Literary Fiction in 2008, and received the North Carolina Humanities Council, 2020 Linda Flowers Literary Award for her non-fiction entry, Being Here in This Body.
Mildred hosts  ‘Mildred Barya’s House of Life’, http://mildredbarya.com, a ‘world literature blog at its finest’!

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE EVENT ON ZOOM

irtual Tuesday Night Shamanic Practices by Rising Fire Shamanism
Apr 27 @ 10:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Online w/ Awakening Asheville

Hosted by Rising Fire Shamanism
Cultivate presence in your life through direct experience. Join us to learn and use an ancient healing technique during each class.

About this Event
*** JOIN US FOR POWERFUL PRACTICES FROM WHEREVER YOU ARE!***
In response to the economic difficulties brought on by COVID, Rising Fire Shamanism is offering our Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class for free beginning in February 2021 going through December 2021.
Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class helps cultivate presence in your life through shamanic practices, sacred play, meditation, and centering techniques.

Learn how to transform and release dense energy from your body, mind and energy field. We do this while strengthening our refined energy, or “sami.” The idea is to build our living energy, our “kausay,” with mindfulness. We focus on different methods of experiencing directly each week to build or to enhance the foundation of your personal work.

This class is for the curious and those who would like to refine their personal practices. You will have the opportunity do something different each week; shamanic breathwork, journeying, meditation and more.

Learn more and register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tuesday-night-shamanic-practices-tickets-112043045766?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch

Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 28 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

How to Transcend The Five Obstacles to Self Love – Jerry Donoghue
Apr 28 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Online

Jerry Donoghue is founder of the Asheville Compassionate Communication Center and the Inner Presence Coaching Institute in Asheville, NC. Jerry is a Master Spiritual Coach who specializes in training couples to be more compassionate with themselves and each other through his courses and private coaching. He also trains helping professionals in gentle, non-invasive, non-prescriptive approaches to support that rely on the clients’/students’ innate intelligence. He draws on his many years of teaching people compassion communication, self-compassion, and nondual awareness work to create this dynamic Inner Presence Inquiry Work. He shows us in a totally practical and deeply experiential way, how to fully enter, lovingly embrace and be present to the disowned, painful and rejected parts of ourselves. www.ashevilleccc.com

What we’re about

The Asheville Wisdom Exchange is a sacred space for the non-judgmental exchange of insight and wisdom in our quest to better express the Divine inherent within us. Topics vary weekly utilizing a combination of experts and open discussion in a unique and respectful format based upon the premise that we all can learn from each other. We welcome you to join us and share your voice in the uplifting of humanity.
We meet via Zoom every Wednesday from 7 – 8:15 p.m.
https://www.ashevillewisdomexchange.org

Thursday, April 29, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 29 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Friday, April 30, 2021
Celebrate National Poetry Month at the Library Black Out Poetry Kits
Apr 30 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
All Buncombe County Libraries

Photo of typewriter

 

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

Sunday, May 2, 2021
Poetrio: Fleda Brown, Rita Quillen, Gretchen Primack
May 2 @ 3:00 pm
Online w/ Malaprop's

Join us for our monthly poetry event featuring three poets. This month, we welcome Fleda Brown, Rita Quillen, and Gretchen Primack. 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 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!


Fleda Brown’s tenth collection of poems, Flying Through a Hole in the Storm (2021) won the Hollis Summers Prize from Ohio University Press. Earlier poems can be found in The Woods Are On Fire: New & Selected Poems, chosen by Ted Kooser for the University of Nebraska poetry series, 2017. Her work has appeared three times in The Best American Poetry and has won a Pushcart Prize, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writer’s Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her new memoir, Mortality, with Friends will be out from Wayne State University Press Fall 2021. She is professor emerita at the University of Delaware and was poet laureate of Delaware from 2001-07. Read more at: https://www.fledabrown.com

Golda Meir once said, “Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.” The poems in Fleda Brown’s brave collection, her thirteenth, take readers on a journey through the fury of this storm. There are plenty of tragedies to weather here, both personal and universal: the death of a father, a child’s terminal cancer, the extinction of bees, and environmental degradation. Brown’s poems are wise, honest, and deeply observant meditations on contemporary science, physics, family, politics, and aging. With tributes to visionary artists, including Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, and Grandma Moses, as well as to life’s terrors, sadnesses, and joys, these works are beautiful dispatches from a renowned poet who sees the shadows lengthening and imagines what they might look like from the other side.

Rita Quillen’s poetry book, Some Notes You Hold was published by Madville in 2020. She’s also author of the novel Wayland, Iris Press (2019), a full-length poetry collection, The Mad Farmer’s Wife, Texas Review Press, (2016), and was a finalist for the Weatherford Award in Appalachian Literature from Berea College. Her novel Hiding Ezra, released by Little Creek Books, was a finalist for the 2005 DANA Awards. One of six semi-finalists for the 2012-14 Poet Laureate of Virginia, she received three Pushcart nominations and a Best of the Net nomination in 2012. She lives, farms, writes songs, and takes photographs at Early Autumn Farm in southwestern Virginia. Read more at www.ritasimsquillen.com.

Some Notes You Hold is about surviving what life throws at us as we age. The so-called “golden years” are so named because of the high admission price—the tremendous losses, disappointments, illnesses, and failures we all experience if we live long enough. The first part of the book, called “Letting Go,” focuses on surviving deep grief. The middle section is a musical interlude, exploring the tremendous power of music to heal us mentally, physically, and spiritually and to reorder our thinking and our emotions. The last section, “Holding On,” explores the roads leading to survival: prayer and meditation, communion with the natural world, and writing.

Gretchen Primack is the author of Kind, republished by Lantern Books in 2021; Visiting Days (Willow Books Editors Select Series); and Doris’ Red Spaces (Mayapple Press). She also co-wrote, with Jenny Brown, the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery).  Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, and other journals and anthologies. Primack has administrated and taught with college programs and poetry workshops in prison for many years, and she moonlights at The Golden Notebook Bookstore in Woodstock, NY. Read more at http://www.gretchenprimack.com/bio.php

Kind is the kind of poetry book that makes you think differently about our world and the beings that inhabit it. Primack explores all facets of our lives with other beings—the beauty, the tragedy, and the absurdity that surrounds her existence. Kind cuts to one’s emotional core to make us think and feel. “It is this poet’s calling to hold kindness and its opposite in tension. What is that opposite? The poems in this volume offer unsettling answers. With Gretchen Primack’s poems, the absence of kindness causes a quaking in our bodies. A lyrical language of the present tense evokes a fierce and tender impatience with what should never have been settled for.”

Tuesday, May 4, 2021
irtual Tuesday Night Shamanic Practices by Rising Fire Shamanism
May 4 @ 10:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Online w/ Awakening Asheville

Hosted by Rising Fire Shamanism
Cultivate presence in your life through direct experience. Join us to learn and use an ancient healing technique during each class.

About this Event
*** JOIN US FOR POWERFUL PRACTICES FROM WHEREVER YOU ARE!***
In response to the economic difficulties brought on by COVID, Rising Fire Shamanism is offering our Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class for free beginning in February 2021 going through December 2021.
Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class helps cultivate presence in your life through shamanic practices, sacred play, meditation, and centering techniques.

Learn how to transform and release dense energy from your body, mind and energy field. We do this while strengthening our refined energy, or “sami.” The idea is to build our living energy, our “kausay,” with mindfulness. We focus on different methods of experiencing directly each week to build or to enhance the foundation of your personal work.

This class is for the curious and those who would like to refine their personal practices. You will have the opportunity do something different each week; shamanic breathwork, journeying, meditation and more.

Learn more and register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tuesday-night-shamanic-practices-tickets-112043045766?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch

Wednesday, May 5, 2021
How to Transcend The Five Obstacles to Self Love – Jerry Donoghue
May 5 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Online

Jerry Donoghue is founder of the Asheville Compassionate Communication Center and the Inner Presence Coaching Institute in Asheville, NC. Jerry is a Master Spiritual Coach who specializes in training couples to be more compassionate with themselves and each other through his courses and private coaching. He also trains helping professionals in gentle, non-invasive, non-prescriptive approaches to support that rely on the clients’/students’ innate intelligence. He draws on his many years of teaching people compassion communication, self-compassion, and nondual awareness work to create this dynamic Inner Presence Inquiry Work. He shows us in a totally practical and deeply experiential way, how to fully enter, lovingly embrace and be present to the disowned, painful and rejected parts of ourselves. www.ashevilleccc.com

What we’re about

The Asheville Wisdom Exchange is a sacred space for the non-judgmental exchange of insight and wisdom in our quest to better express the Divine inherent within us. Topics vary weekly utilizing a combination of experts and open discussion in a unique and respectful format based upon the premise that we all can learn from each other. We welcome you to join us and share your voice in the uplifting of humanity.
We meet via Zoom every Wednesday from 7 – 8:15 p.m.
https://www.ashevillewisdomexchange.org

Tuesday, May 11, 2021
irtual Tuesday Night Shamanic Practices by Rising Fire Shamanism
May 11 @ 10:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Online w/ Awakening Asheville

Hosted by Rising Fire Shamanism
Cultivate presence in your life through direct experience. Join us to learn and use an ancient healing technique during each class.

About this Event
*** JOIN US FOR POWERFUL PRACTICES FROM WHEREVER YOU ARE!***
In response to the economic difficulties brought on by COVID, Rising Fire Shamanism is offering our Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class for free beginning in February 2021 going through December 2021.
Tuesday Night Shamanic Practice class helps cultivate presence in your life through shamanic practices, sacred play, meditation, and centering techniques.

Learn how to transform and release dense energy from your body, mind and energy field. We do this while strengthening our refined energy, or “sami.” The idea is to build our living energy, our “kausay,” with mindfulness. We focus on different methods of experiencing directly each week to build or to enhance the foundation of your personal work.

This class is for the curious and those who would like to refine their personal practices. You will have the opportunity do something different each week; shamanic breathwork, journeying, meditation and more.

Learn more and register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tuesday-night-shamanic-practices-tickets-112043045766?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch

Wednesday, May 12, 2021
How to Transcend The Five Obstacles to Self Love – Jerry Donoghue
May 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Online

Jerry Donoghue is founder of the Asheville Compassionate Communication Center and the Inner Presence Coaching Institute in Asheville, NC. Jerry is a Master Spiritual Coach who specializes in training couples to be more compassionate with themselves and each other through his courses and private coaching. He also trains helping professionals in gentle, non-invasive, non-prescriptive approaches to support that rely on the clients’/students’ innate intelligence. He draws on his many years of teaching people compassion communication, self-compassion, and nondual awareness work to create this dynamic Inner Presence Inquiry Work. He shows us in a totally practical and deeply experiential way, how to fully enter, lovingly embrace and be present to the disowned, painful and rejected parts of ourselves. www.ashevilleccc.com

What we’re about

The Asheville Wisdom Exchange is a sacred space for the non-judgmental exchange of insight and wisdom in our quest to better express the Divine inherent within us. Topics vary weekly utilizing a combination of experts and open discussion in a unique and respectful format based upon the premise that we all can learn from each other. We welcome you to join us and share your voice in the uplifting of humanity.
We meet via Zoom every Wednesday from 7 – 8:15 p.m.
https://www.ashevillewisdomexchange.org

Saturday, May 15, 2021
Transformational Forest Bathing
May 15 @ 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
The Forest Farmacy

Forest bathing is a ancient Japanese practice for de-stressing and relating to the more-than-human world. It has gained much popularity in Asia, and now in the US, as a growing bank of scientific research is demonstrating it’s healing benefits.

Forest bathing has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, depression and anger while strengthening the immune system, improving cardiovascular and metabolic health and increasing overall wellbeing.

It’s a delicious way to be in the world!

Transformational Forest Bathing weaves in techniques from eco-therapy, depth psychology, wilderness rites of passage and mythic storytelling to form a powerfully transformative experience. We will work with whatever is holding you back right now and show you how to work with the land to gain insight on your next steps forward. As you shift through this current block you’ll learn how navigate this way in the future.

You will:
– Unwind the knots you formed by keeping it all together
– Learn how to let the forest hold you
– Connect deeply to the more-than-human world
– Shift into a state of consciousness that allows you to receive information and nourishment, one where you don’t need to figure it out
– Learn how to work with the natural world to move through whatever is blocking you right now
– Open the door to reclaiming your ancestral heritage

Is this for you?
Honestly, if you are simply looking for some stress reduction and a lovely walk in the forest this isn’t the program for you. If you are ready to dig deep and do some soul-tending then come on over!

It doesn’t matter if you already have a strong nature connection practice or you have never heard of it, the program is designed to work for any level of previous nature connection experience.

What is key is your desire and willingness to work with whatever part of you is holding you back from living the life you want right now.

Anthony Mikolojeski An Evening with Spirit The Asheville Medium
May 15 @ 7:00 pm
The Center

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Our loved ones are very much a part of our daily lives!

Anthony Mikolojeski is a third-generation Polish-American psychic and natural-born medium. He first experienced his gifts of clairaudience, clairvoyance, clairsentience, and communication with the spirit world as a child of five years of age. Over the years, these spiritual experiences increased, which led him to realize he had a special mission in the world, which set him on his mediumship journey. As a psychic medium, he is very passionate about his work and he believes mediumship is the most fulfilling experience in his life. Being able to connect with loved ones in the spirit world not only provides the evidence of the afterlife, but also allows the love, closure, and healing to be given to his clients. A simultaneous healing occurs for the loved one in the spirit world and the client here in the physical. This healing allows us, as souls, to let go of the deep emotions that may be holding us back in life; thus allowing us to live more fully and joyfully and on our blueprint path. Anthony has studied with some of the world’s top mediums in the U.S. and U.K. His travels have led him to study at the prestigious Arthur Findlay College to further his advanced education in mediumship.

“My responsibility is to hold a positive space and always come from a place of love. I truly feel that I was given this beautiful gift from God to help people. This opportunity to give validating messages imparts the beautiful understanding that our souls do live on past the physical realm.”

Clairvoyance – the ability to see images/visions and people

Clairaudience – the ability to hear sounds and voices

Clairscentience – the ability to smell perfumes, foods, tobacco

Claircognizance – the internal feeling or clear knowing by Spirit

Clairempathy – clear emotion while tuning in the emotional experience of the person or place

Animal Communication – receiving messages from pets from the spirit world, as well as pets that are still living.