Calendar of Events

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. 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 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!

A young maid at an upscale resort hides her banjo-playing freight hopper brother. An unlikely romance bridges a quarter-century age gap and a 150-year-old murder. A man tries to turn his sheltered mother’s backyard shed into a pricey vacation rental. A gig worker must shake off her darker identity to become a professional baby namer. This mesmeric debut collection of stories set in the Appalachian mountains weaves together the curious and the sublime, with Bianchi’s lyrical style cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

Melanie McGee Bianchi grew up in a series of character-forming historic houses in different parts of the U.S. Starting at age 12, she gathered modest notice on the spelling-bee circuit, won short-story contests in various newspapers, and placed poems and fiction in national print publications, including the grunge-era teen magazine Sassy. After university, she began a career in features journalism in Asheville, North Carolina, where she has lived most of her life. Melanie was the lead arts reporter and Arts & Entertainment Editor at Mountain Xpress, a member paper of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, for ten years. She interviewed celebrities of many genres, including Loretta Lynn, David Sedaris, Aimee Mann, the late R.L. Burnside, and the late Doc Watson. In 2004, she won an industry Gold Award for special-section editing.After five happy years as a stay-at-home mom, Melanie next edited VERVE, a women’s magazine, for a period in the 2010s, working with Venezuelan fashion photographer Zaire Kacz and model/stylist Sara Fields Bridges. Melanie currently manages three regional lifestyle publications: Asheville Made, Bold Life, and Carolina Home + Garden. Her humor essays have been published regionally and nationally, and her poetry has been shortlisted in national chapbook contests and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Melanie’s current fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review’s Summer Prize Issue, in Chattahoochee Review, and in The Moth Magazine (based in Co. Cavan, Ireland). These pieces and more are included in her first book, The Ballad of Cherrystoke + Other Stories, forthcoming from Blackwater Press in 2022.

Alli Marshall is a poet, performer, writer, editor, film maker and creative community builder. She’s interested in moving writing beyond the page, seeking the golden in the mundane, finding the intersection of art and social justice, and reconnecting with mythology — both ancient and modern.

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. 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 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!

A young maid at an upscale resort hides her banjo-playing freight hopper brother. An unlikely romance bridges a quarter-century age gap and a 150-year-old murder. A man tries to turn his sheltered mother’s backyard shed into a pricey vacation rental. A gig worker must shake off her darker identity to become a professional baby namer. This mesmeric debut collection of stories set in the Appalachian mountains weaves together the curious and the sublime, with Bianchi’s lyrical style cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

Melanie McGee Bianchi grew up in a series of character-forming historic houses in different parts of the U.S. Starting at age 12, she gathered modest notice on the spelling-bee circuit, won short-story contests in various newspapers, and placed poems and fiction in national print publications, including the grunge-era teen magazine Sassy. After university, she began a career in features journalism in Asheville, North Carolina, where she has lived most of her life. Melanie was the lead arts reporter and Arts & Entertainment Editor at Mountain Xpress, a member paper of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, for ten years. She interviewed celebrities of many genres, including Loretta Lynn, David Sedaris, Aimee Mann, the late R.L. Burnside, and the late Doc Watson. In 2004, she won an industry Gold Award for special-section editing.After five happy years as a stay-at-home mom, Melanie next edited VERVE, a women’s magazine, for a period in the 2010s, working with Venezuelan fashion photographer Zaire Kacz and model/stylist Sara Fields Bridges. Melanie currently manages three regional lifestyle publications: Asheville Made, Bold Life, and Carolina Home + Garden. Her humor essays have been published regionally and nationally, and her poetry has been shortlisted in national chapbook contests and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Melanie’s current fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review’s Summer Prize Issue, in Chattahoochee Review, and in The Moth Magazine (based in Co. Cavan, Ireland). These pieces and more are included in her first book, The Ballad of Cherrystoke + Other Stories, forthcoming from Blackwater Press in 2022.

Alli Marshall is a poet, performer, writer, editor, film maker and creative community builder. She’s interested in moving writing beyond the page, seeking the golden in the mundane, finding the intersection of art and social justice, and reconnecting with mythology — both ancient and modern.

Join us for a special Miss Malaprop’s Storytime featuring author and illustrator Wallace West!

This 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!

In this clever twist on a traditional tale, a boy who loves his frilly, swishy riding hood turns the tables on a big, bad, bullying wolf!
Better not mess with Little Red when he’s got on his favorite frilly red riding hood! It makes him feel happier than a pig in mud, more special than a birthday cake, and mighty as a firecracker. Nothing’s gonna stop him from being himself…Not even a big ol’ bully of a WOLF! With admirable spunk and a heaping helping of southern humor and hospitality, Little Red finds a way to crack the shell of the closed-minded wolf’s perception of frills and bows.
This refreshingly spirited version of the classic tale of “Little Red Riding Hood” explores the challenge of staying on your path when confronted by strangers who don’t want to understand you.

Wallace West is a native Texan and world explorer. Wallace says “I once foolishly pet a wild alligator and consider a tinned-fish picnic in Norway the best meal I’ve ever had. By day I work in advertising. By night my beagle and I wonder if the house is haunted.”

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. 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 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!

Veteran Atlanta reporter Dan Chapman, distressed by sprawl-driven environmental ills in a region he loves, recreated Muir’s journey to see for himself how nature has fared since Muir’s time. Channeling Muir, he uses humor, keen observation, and a deep love of place to celebrate the South’s natural riches. But he laments that a treasured way of life for generations of Southerners is endangered as long-simmering struggles intensify over misused and dwindling resources. Chapman seeks to discover how Southerners might balance surging population growth with protecting the natural beauty Muir found so special. Each chapter touches upon a local ecological problem–at-risk species in Mammoth Cave, coal ash in Kingston, Tennessee, climate change in the Nantahala National Forest, water wars in Georgia, aquifer depletion in Florida–that resonates across the South. Chapman delves into the region’s natural history, moving between John Muir’s vivid descriptions of a lush botanical paradise and the myriad environmental problems facing the South today. Along the way he talks to locals with deep ties to the land–scientists, hunters, politicians, and even a Muir impersonator–who describe the changes they’ve witnessed and what it will take to accommodate a fast-growing population without destroying the natural beauty and a cherished connection to nature.

A Road Running Southward is part travelogue, part environmental cri de coeur, and paints a picture of a South under siege. It is a passionate appeal, a call to action to save one of the loveliest and most biodiverse regions of the world by understanding what we have to lose if we do nothing.

Dan Chapman is a writer, reporter, and lover of the outdoors. He grew up in Washington DC and Tokyo, the son of a newspaperman and an English teacher. He worked for Congressional Quarterly, The Winston-Salem Journal, The Charlotte Observer, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has also reported from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He currently writes stories about conservation in the South for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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.

This 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!

We will have a limited quantity of signed copies available for purchase. Please order the book below and indicate that you would like a signed copy in the “comments” section during checkout. 

If you’ve ever questioned the logic of basing an entire identity around what you have between your legs, it’s time to embark on a daring escape outside of the binary box. Written in a choose-your-own path style, you’ll explore over one hundred different scenarios that embrace nearly every definition of gender around the globe and throughout history in a refreshingly creative exploration of the ways gender colors and shapes our world.

In She/He/They/Me, Dr. Robyn Ryle, professor of sociology and gender studies at Hanover College in Indiana, thoughtfully discusses gender constructs, expectations, and transitions along with covering everything from the science, biology, and psychology of gender to the philosophy, legality and societal implications.

This is a must-read for better understanding and celebrating LGBTQ+, nonbinary, and transgender identities and a great resource for parents of gender queer kids.

Dr. Robyn Ryle is a writer and a professor of sociology and gender studies at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana, where she has been teaching sociology of gender and other courses for 20 years. She went to Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, for her undergraduate degrees in sociology and English with a concentration in women’s studies. She received her PhD in sociology from Indiana University-Bloomington and is originally from northern Kentucky.

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. 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 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 a series of 12 lyrical nature essays, herbalist, writer, and Earth intuitive Asia Suler illuminates the healing power of the living Earth–and gives us permission to nurture self-compassion and empathy as forces for personal and ecological healing.In a time of unprecedented ecological devastation, it’s easy to feel hopeless and disconnected. It’s easier still to mask our inherent goodness–to imagine that our unique and precious gifts simply aren’t enough, or forget the power of our inborn empathy. For those of us who are highly sensitive, innately attuned to the workings and whispers of the natural world, it can be hard to embody the belief that we’re enough as we are–and that can heal the Earth.Here, Suler reveals the opposite: our goodness, our empathy, our intuitive connections, and our capacity for self-compassion are more than personal traits or antidotes to despair: they are, in fact, our most potent vehicles for planetary transformation. And as we learn to more deeply nurture and accept ourselves, we unlock living, healing connections to Earth.Combining poetic nature writing with exercises and reflection prompts at the end of each essay, Mirrors in the Earth coaxes us to come as we are: to discover and tend the inherent brilliance and medicine that lives in each of us. From the manatee-calm springs of wild Florida to the flower-dotted coves of the world’s most biodiverse mountains, Mirrors in the Earth is an invitation and encounter with the benevolence of the living world–and a nature therapy session for the soul.

Asia Suler is a writer, teacher, earth intuitive and ecological philosopher who lives in the folds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is the founder of One Willow Apothecaries, an Appalachian-grown company that offers handcrafted herbal medicines and educational experiences in herbalism, animism, ancestral healing and earth-centered personal growth. Asia has guided over 20,000 students in 70+ countries through her immersive online programs. With her writings and teachings, Asia helps people embrace their own unique medicine through a joyful engagement with the natural world. Mirrors in the Earth: Reflections on Self-Healing from the Living World is her first book.

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. 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 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 a series of 12 lyrical nature essays, herbalist, writer, and Earth intuitive Asia Suler illuminates the healing power of the living Earth–and gives us permission to nurture self-compassion and empathy as forces for personal and ecological healing.In a time of unprecedented ecological devastation, it’s easy to feel hopeless and disconnected. It’s easier still to mask our inherent goodness–to imagine that our unique and precious gifts simply aren’t enough, or forget the power of our inborn empathy. For those of us who are highly sensitive, innately attuned to the workings and whispers of the natural world, it can be hard to embody the belief that we’re enough as we are–and that can heal the Earth.Here, Suler reveals the opposite: our goodness, our empathy, our intuitive connections, and our capacity for self-compassion are more than personal traits or antidotes to despair: they are, in fact, our most potent vehicles for planetary transformation. And as we learn to more deeply nurture and accept ourselves, we unlock living, healing connections to Earth.Combining poetic nature writing with exercises and reflection prompts at the end of each essay, Mirrors in the Earth coaxes us to come as we are: to discover and tend the inherent brilliance and medicine that lives in each of us. From the manatee-calm springs of wild Florida to the flower-dotted coves of the world’s most biodiverse mountains, Mirrors in the Earth is an invitation and encounter with the benevolence of the living world–and a nature therapy session for the soul.

Asia Suler is a writer, teacher, earth intuitive and ecological philosopher who lives in the folds of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is the founder of One Willow Apothecaries, an Appalachian-grown company that offers handcrafted herbal medicines and educational experiences in herbalism, animism, ancestral healing and earth-centered personal growth. Asia has guided over 20,000 students in 70+ countries through her immersive online programs. With her writings and teachings, Asia helps people embrace their own unique medicine through a joyful engagement with the natural world. Mirrors in the Earth: Reflections on Self-Healing from the Living World is her first book.

Join us for a special Storytime event featuring Ashley Belote!

This 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!

An overly excited elephant learns to listen with a little help from her new friends in Listen Up, Louella, an adorably humorous new picture book from Ashley Belote, the illustrator of Frankenslime. Louella is VERY excited to be at Roar Scout Camp. There’s so many fun things for her to do! But Louella is so busy having fun that she doesn’t stop to listen to anyone else… Or to realize that maybe her new friends aren’t having quite as much fun as she is. When Louella misses an important invitation, it’s up to Tarantula and the rest of their friends to help Louella learn to listen and play together.

Ashley Belote is the illustrator of Frankenslime and the author-illustrator of Listen Up, Louella . She studied traditional animation under the direction of Don Bluth. Ashley earned her BA from Alderson Broaddus University and her MA in Arts Administration from the University of Kentucky. Her graduate study included a children’s literature and illustration course through Simmons College. Ashley lives and works in North Carolina where she creates artwork that she hopes brings lots of laughs to others.