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.

Monday, February 28, 2022
February Book Club: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Feb 28 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Zillicoah Beer Co.
February Book Club: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

In order to celebrate Black History Month, the club selected a classic by Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. In 1925, shortly before entering Barnard College, Hurston became one of the leaders of the literary renaissance happening in Harlem and in 1937, she published her most famous novel. It is required reading for some, and for those who missed out-now is your chance to read it!

According to the Goodreads description: Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person — no mean feat for a black woman in the ’30s. Janie’s quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37415.Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=rIj2Ppi2Ra&rank=1

Science Fiction Book Club
Feb 28 @ 7:00 pm
online

Join host and Malaprop’s Bookseller Allison to dive into the wreck of the wily and wonderful world of science fiction, fantasy, weird fiction, speculative fiction, and literary horror with a healthy mix of underappreciated classic and contemporary books. Meets the last Monday of every month at 7 pm on Zoom. Also meets on the second Monday of every month at 7 pm to discuss the film adaptations of the books we read.  Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading and contact the club host to join. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!

Monday, January 31, 2022 – 7:00pm
Monday, February 28, 2022 – 7:00pm
Monday, March 28, 2022 – 7:00pm
Monday, April 25, 2022 – 7:00pm
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Benjamin Gilmer launches The Other Dr. Gilmer at Isis Music Hall
Mar 1 @ 6:00 pm
Isis Music Hall

Image shows an olive green border around a lighter green box containing the text: Dr. Benjamin Gilmer launches THE OTHER DR. GILMER at Isis Music Hall. Next to the text are photos of the author and the front cover of the book. In-person. Tuesday, March 1, 2022. 6 PM ET.

This is a free in-person event at Isis Music Hall in West Asheville. Space is limited.

Masks are required for all attendees while indoors. Thank you for helping us keep our staff and neighbors healthy.

Books will be available for purchase on site and a signing will follow Dr. Benjamin Gilmer’s talk and a Q&A moderated by Dr. Jeff Heck.

THE OTHER DR. GILMER

A powerful true story about a shocking crime and a mysterious illness that will forever change your notions of how we punish and how we heal—an expansion on one of the most popular This American Life episodes of all time.

The Other Dr. Gilmer takes readers on a thrilling and heart-wrenching journey through our shared human fallibility, made worse by a prison system that is failing our most vulnerable citizens. With deep compassion and an even deeper sense of justice, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer delves into the mystery of what could make a caring doctor commit a brutal murder. And in the process, his powerful story asks us to answer a profound question: In a country with the highest incarceration rates in the world, what would it look like if we prioritized healing rather than punishment?

“A remarkable medical detective story–cum–memoir, grippingly told . . . I was drawn in by every part of it.”—Atul Gawande, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Being Mortal

ONLINE- Enka-Candler Library Evening Book Club
Mar 1 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
online

ONLINE- Enka-Candler Library Evening Book Club

Chat with other book lovers about this month’s book selection.

Interested in reading ahead? Here’s what we have coming up in the next few months!
– November- “Once Upon A River” Diane Setterfield
– December- “Dutch House” Ann Patchett
– January- “Mexican Gothic” Silvia Moreno-Garcia
– February- “The Rose Code” Kate Quinn

To reserve your copy of the book, visit buncombe.nccardinal.org or swing by the library to pick one up from the book clubs holds shelf.

To join the book club email [email protected] or call us at 250-4758.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022
Miss Malaprop’s Storytime— ages 3-9
Mar 2 @ 10:00 am
online

Due to Covid-19, we are posting Storytime on Instagram in lieu of an in-store event. Join us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/malapropsbookstore/ to tune into Miss Malaprop’s Storytime from your home.

Join us with your wee ones on Wednesdays at 10 am for classic and contemporary stories sure to enchant and entertain. Together, we’ll introduce children to the wonderful world of books! Recommended for ages 3-9.

Wednesday, February 2, 2022 – 10:00am
Wednesday, February 16, 2022 – 10:00am
Wednesday, Ma
“The Prettiest Star” – A reading and talk by Carter Sickels
Mar 2 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
online

“The Prettiest Star” – A reading and talk by Carter Sickels (Eastern KY Univ.)

Southern Book Prize winner Carter Sickels is the author of the highly-acclaimed book The Prettiest Star. Set in the 1980s, the book follows a young gay man’s return home to rural Appalachian Ohio after being diagnosed with AIDS. The Prettiest Star is lauded for its unflinchingly honest storytelling and wholly believable characters: “This immersive, tragic book will stay with readers.” (Booklist)

Register in advance for this virtual talk and reading on Zoom.

This event is made possible by the NEH Endowed Professor Fund and UNC Asheville’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department.

About: Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star (Hub City Press), winner of the 2021 Southern Book Prize, the Ohioana Book Award in Fiction, and the Weatherford Award, and selected as a Kirkus Best Book of 2020 and a Best LGBT Book of 2020 by O Magazine. His debut novel, The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury), a 2013 Oregon Book Award finalist and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 and is now streaming. His writing appears in various publications, including The AtlanticOxford AmericanPoets & WritersBuzzFeedGuernicaJoyland, and Catapult. Sickels is an associate professor at Eastern Kentucky University.

Live Stream: Adele Myers presents The Tobacco Wives, in conversation with Wiley Cash
Mar 2 @ 7:00 pm
online

Image shows a turquoise border around a white box. Black test reads: Adele Myers presents The Tobacco Wives in conversation with Wiley Cash. 7pm Wed. Mar 2, 2022. Image also contains headshots of Adele Myers and Wiley Cash and the cover image of THE TOBACCO WIVES.

If you decide to attend and purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina–the tobacco capital of the South–where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives.

But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn’t quite the carefree paradise that it seems. A trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems, and although Maddie is quick to believe that this is a coincidence, she inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests otherwise.

Maddie wants to report what she knows, but in a town where everyone depends on Big Tobacco to survive, she doesn’t know who she can trust–and fears that exposing the truth may destroy the lives of the proud, strong women with whom she has forged strong bonds.

Shedding light on the hidden history of women’s activism during the post-war period, at its heart, The Tobacco Wives is a deeply human, emotionally satisfying, and dramatic novel about the power of female connection and the importance of seeking truth.

Adele Myers grew up in Asheville, North Carolina and has a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently works in advertising and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, son and their rescue dog, Chipper. The Tobacco Wives is her first novel.

Wiley Cash  is the New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home, the acclaimed This Dark Road to Mercy, and most recently The Last Ballad. He won the SIBA Book Award and the Conroy Legacy Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, and has been nominated for many more. A native of North Carolina, he is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He lives in Wilmington, NC with his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, and their two daughters.

Thursday, March 3, 2022
Weaverville Library Afternoon Book Club: Moloka’i: A Novel by Alan Brennert
Mar 3 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
online

Weaverville Library Afternoon Book Club

Join us as we discuss Moloka’i: A Novel by Alan Brennert.  We will meet via ZOOM on Thursday, March 3rd at 3 PM. Registration is necessary.  Newcomers are welcome!

Live Stream: Derek Baxter presents In Pursuit of Jefferson: Traveling through Europe with the Most Perplexing Founding Father
Mar 3 @ 6:00 pm
online
Image shows a dark blue border around a light blue box containing the text: Derek Baxter presents In Pursuit of Jefferson. Next to the text are photos of the author and the front cover of the book. Virtual. Thursday, March. 3, 2022. 6 PM ET.

This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


A debut that combines historical nonfiction with travel books, for fans of Bill Bryson and Rinker Buck, In Pursuit of Jefferson is the story of an American on a journey through Europe, following the epic trail of Thomas Jefferson. A controversial founding father. A man ready for a change. And a completely unique trip through Europe. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson was a broken man. Reeling from the loss of his wife and humiliated from a political scandal during the Revolutionary war, he needed to remake himself. And to do that, he traveled. Traipsing through Europe, Jefferson saw and learned as much as he could, ultimately bringing his knowledge home to a young America. There, he would rise to power and shape a nation. More than two hundred years later, Derek Baxter, a devotee of American history, stumbles on an obscure travel guide written by Jefferson—Hints for Americans Traveling Through Europe—as he’s going through his own personal crisis. Who better to offer advice than a founding father himself? Using Hints as his roadmap, Baxter embarks on a new journey, following Jefferson through six countries and countless lessons. But what Baxter learns isn’t always what Jefferson had in mind, and as he comes to understand Jefferson better, he doesn’t always like what he finds. In Pursuit of Jefferson is at once the story of a lifechanging trip through Europe, an unflinching look at a founding father, and a moving personal journey. With rich historical detail, a sense of humor, and boundless heart Baxter explores how we can be better moving forward only by first looking back.

Derek Baxter graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in history. He is currently an attorney who lives in Virginia. Afteryears of research, Derek made nine separate trips abroad on Jefferson’s trail. You can follow his adventures with Thomas Jefferson atwww.jeffersontravels.com

Author Lisa See Joins the East Asheville Book Club for March
Mar 3 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
online w/ East Asheville Library

The East Asheville Library is excited to announce that author Lisa See will be joining them over Zoom to discuss their March book club pick, The Island of the Sea Women. Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels including Snow Flower and the Secret FanThe Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, and Shanghai Girls.

We are excited to announce that author Lisa See will be joining us over Zoom to discuss this month’s book pick, The Island of the Sea Women.

Friday, March 4, 2022
Burial Beer Co. Hosts Dr. Benjamin Gilmer presenting The Other Dr. Gilmer
Mar 4 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Burial Beer Co.

This free, in-person event runs 5:30-7 p.m. and includes an author talk, Q&A and book signing. Malaprop’s will have copies of the book available for purchase at the event.

Masks are required for all attendees while indoors. Space is limited.

Join Asheville physician Benjamin Gilmer as he presents his book, THE OTHER DR. GILMER, Friday, March 4, at Burial Beer Co., 40 Collier Ave., in downtown Asheville.

THE OTHER DR. GILMER: Two Men, A Murder, and An Unlikely Fight for Justice is the powerful true story about a shocking crime and a mysterious illness that will forever change notions of how we punish and how we heal. The memoir is an expansion on one of the most popular “This American Life” radio episodes of all time, “Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde.”

THE OTHER DR. GILMER takes readers on a thrilling and heart-wrenching journey through our shared human fallibility, made worse by a prison system that is failing our most vulnerable citizens. With deep compassion and an even deeper sense of justice, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer delves into the mystery of what could make a caring doctor commit a brutal murder. And in the process, his powerful story asks us to answer a profound question: In a country with the highest incarceration rates in the world, what would it look like if we prioritized healing rather than punishment?

Saturday, March 5, 2022
Live Stream: Ruth Behar presents Tía Fortuna’s New Home in conversation with Marjorie Agosín
Mar 5 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
online
Sunday, March 6, 2022
Virtual Poetrio: Alexis Jackson, Komal Mathew, Marianne Worthington
Mar 6 @ 4:00 pm
online

Image shows a blue  border around a box containing the text: Poetrio: Alexis Jackson, Komal Mathew, Marianne Worthington. Next to the text are photos of  the authors and the front covers of the books. Virtual. Sunday, March. 6, 2022. 4 PM ET.

Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


Alexis V. Jackson is a Philadelphia-born, San Diego-based writer, poet, and teacher whose work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Jubilat, The Amistad, La Libreta, Solstice Literary Magazine, and 805 Lit among others. Jackson earned her MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Messiah University. She is a 2021 finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her debut poetry collection, My Sisters’ Country (2022), won the Koré Press’ first book prize. Jackson has served as a reader for Callaloo and Bomb Magazine, and lectures in the University of San Diego’s English Department. For more, visit https://www.alexisvjackson.com

In My Sister’s Country, Alexis Jackson artfully braids together a multi-vocal chorus of Black women’s voices across, over, under, and through time. From Gwendolyn Brooks to June Jordan to the Book of Genesis, Jackson’s poetry sizzles and samples with mischief. It’s gutbucket, daredevil, Double Dutch, next-generation sass. A mixtape of mothers and daughters, blood and beat, this book dances with ghosts. Jackson bends and breaks forms like the sonnet, pantoum, and zuihitsu and introduces the playlist poem as she explores the makings of Black girlhood and womanhood. Staying true to the beauties, traumas, moans and undoings found there, the poet invites readers to consider the ways Black women, who were once considered countryless property, made country out of and in one another, and asks the questions: What are the consequences? How terrifying and beautiful are they? How terrifying and beautiful is the rebuilding, the renaming, of country? Jackson confronts expectations put on Black women through time, family, patriarchy, and religion. “Christ is supposed to give me salvation for my soul,/ but what about my thighs, and my mouth, and my pancreas,” she writes. This is a book of the body, unbound by convention while creating entirely new ones.

—–

Komal Mathew is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Diode Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Narrative,The New Republic, and others. She lives with her family in Smyrna, Georgia, where she is the co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly. For more, visit https://www.komalmathew.com

For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons: In this spectacular debut, notions of what it means to be beautiful–both inside and out– get complicated with a refreshing vulnerability. Komal Mathew makes captivating poems bubbling over with uncommon wisdom and grace. Mathew’s poems yield a faith of transparency and yearning, a lyric pulse arisen from the longing of our souls to be clothed with eternity, our heavenly home: “Though my love for you didn’t end / because the singing ended, the lullaby / moved to a wind that promised a nest…” This lovely book is a festival of light infused with love, bejeweled by the elemental truths in this earthbound life of family, motherhood, and human desire: “Blessed be the one who hears you cry out / like a million pressed stones – / jasper, turquoise, emerald with gold – / and uncovers your breath of bees.

—–

Marianne Worthington is a poet, editor, and cofounder of Still: The Journal. She lives and teaches in southeastern Kentucky. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, CALYX, Grist, Cheap Pop, Appalachian Review, Feed, Ethel, Chapter 16, and other outlets. With Silas House she co-edited Piano in a Sycamore: Writing Lessons from the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop, and is author of a poetry chapbook Larger Bodies Than Mine, which won the Appalachian Book of the Year Award. For more, visit https://marianneworthington.com

Skillfully divided into three distinct yet harmonious parts, cantillating local, familial, and personal histories, The Girl Singer is a collection of lyrical and descriptive poems that offer unique insight on famous and infamous Appalachian tales from this life and the next. Part family history, part music, and part nature walk, The Girl Singer beautifully weaves Feminism, Appalachian culture, and country music into one thread. Worthington’s attentive eye and heart are reflected in the starkly striking and painful images she paints in the poems. Every poem, whether describing a connection with Appalachian wildlife, retelling the lyrics of a classic country tune, reflecting on the speaker’s bloodline, or giving voice to famous musical figures of the past, strikes a powerful chord and creates a sisterhood for singing old songs in new ways.

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Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer and poet. She has written short-stories and essays for various publications, features and travel articles for newspapers. Her first collection of poetry titled: Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say won the National Award for poetry publication 2002. She is also the author of the poetry collections The Price of Memory and Give Me Room to Move My Feet. Barya is Assistant professor of Creative Writing and World Literature at University of North Carolina-Asheville. Learn more at http://mildredbarya.com/.

Run Rose Run Virtual Book Launch with Dolly Parton + James Patterson
Mar 6 @ 7:30 pm
online
Image shows a photograph of authors Dolly Parton and James Parton along with a photo of the book RUN ROSE RUN and the text: Run Rose Run Virtual Book Launch Event with Dolly Parton & James Patterson. Sunday, March 6, 2022. 7:30 PM ET. Live on YouTube. Little Brown logo also shown.

Join Dolly Parton and James Patterson for the virtual launch of Run Rose Run on Sunday, March 6, 2022 at 7:30 PM ET! 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Tickets are $30.00 each (plus applicable tax and shipping). Each ticket includes an unsigned hardcover copy of Run Rose Run and a link to access the live event on YouTube. The virtual event is hosted by Little, Brown and Company. Purchase your ticket below.

The link required to attend will be emailed to you prior to the event. Please make sure you submit the correct email address with your ticket purchase and that your email filters will allow messages from addresses @malaprops.com.

Ticket sales end on March 6, 2022, at 1:00 PM ET.

NOTE: Books bundled with event tickets may be shipped ONLY to United States addresses. Books will not be shipped before publication date, March 7, 2022. Postal delivery times vary.


From America’s most beloved superstar and its greatest storyteller—a thriller about a young singer-songwriter on the rise and on the run, and determined to do whatever it takes to survive.

Dolly Parton is a singer, songwriter, actress, producer, businesswoman, and philanthropist. The composer of more than 3,000 songs, she has sold over 100 million records worldwide, and has given away millions of books to children through her nonprofit, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

James Patterson is the world’s bestselling author. The creator of Alex Cross, he has produced more enduring fictional heroes than any other novelist alive. He lives in Florida with his family.

Tuesday, March 8, 2022
Leicester Library Book Discussion Group: Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
Mar 8 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
online w/ Leicester Library

Leicester Library Book Discussion Group

This month we’re discussing Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey.   The Leicester Library Book Discussion Group meets the second Tuesday of each month at 1 pm in the Community Room at the library. Masks and social distancing required. Newcomers welcome!

Live Stream: Jonathan Stutzman and Heather Fox launch Fitz and Cleo Get Creative
Mar 8 @ 6:00 pm
online
Image shows an orange border around a white box containing the text: Jonathan Stutzman and Heather Fox launch Fitz and Cleo Get Creative. Tuesday, Mar. 8, 2022. 6 PM ET. Next to the text are photos of Stutzman and Fox, and the covers of the book, Fitz and Cleo Get Creative/

This event is a free event, but registration is required.  Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event. Pre-order Fitz and Cleo Get Creative from Malaprop’s to get a signed and personalized copy. Please request signing and/or personalization in the “comments” section during checkout.

If you decide to attend and purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


The dynamo team behind Llama Destroys the World continue their delightful and hilarious ghostly hijinks in their early reader graphic novel series, perfect for fans of Elephant & Piggie and Narwhal & Jelly. These two know how to keep spirits high and the good times rolling! In their first-ever second book, join the most adorable apparitions this way of the afterlife through ten gut-busting creative farces, including flexing their storytelling muscles with ghost stories, songwriting, and directing their first film.

Jonathan Stutzman is the author of numerous books for children, including Fitz and CleoLlama Unleashes the AlpacalypseLlama Destroys the WorldSanta Baby, and Don’t Feed the Coos, as well as the Tiny T-Rex series. He received his masters at Temple University for film and digital media. He lives in Lititz, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Heather Fox.

Heather Fox is an illustrator and graphic designer, creating art in pen and ink, digital, and gouache. She is the illustrator of Fitz and CleoLlama Unleashes the AlpacalypseLlama Destroys the WorldSanta Baby, and Don’t Feed the Coos. She lives in Lititz, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Jonathan Stutzman.

Thursday, March 10, 2022
Live Stream: Neema Avashia presents Another Appalachia in conversation with Chaya Bhuvaneswar
Mar 10 @ 6:00 pm
online
Image shows a dark red border around a box containing the text: Neema Avashia presents Another Appalachia in conversation with Chaya Bhuvaneswar. Next to the text are photos of the author and the front cover of the book.. Virtual. Thursday, March. 10, 2022. 6 PM ET.

 

If you decide to attend and purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


When Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” In Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, Avashia examines both the roots and the resonance of her identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole.

Neema Avashia was born and raised in southern West Virginia to parents who immigrated to the United States. She has been a middle school teacher in the Boston Public Schools since 2003. Her essays have appeared in the Bitter Southerner, Catapult, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere.

Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a physician and writer with work in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Electric Lit, The Millions, Joyland, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized sexual violence by diverse women of color. She has received a MacDowell Colony fellowship, Sewanee Writers Conference scholarship and Henfield award for her writing. Follow her on Twitter at @chayab77 including for upcoming readings and events.

Black Experience Book Club
Mar 10 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
online
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Mar 10 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Odd's Cafe

In this wonderful book, Kimmerer highlights many of the wonderful lessons in life we can learn from nature and indigenous traditions. For this particular meetup, I’m going to ask everyone have read (and bring their copy of) the book. We will each discuss our favorite chapter/lesson learned from the book.

I hope this advanced notice gives everyone time to read!

Short Story “The Plumed Knight”
Mar 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
online

Join US VIA Zoom for a
Discussion led by Brandon Johnson, Program Manager, Blue Ridge National Heritage Area
Register at [email protected]
Thomas Wolfe Short Story Discussions are a partnership between the Wilma Dykeman Legacy and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site. Our text is The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe, edited by Francis E. Skipp with a Foreword by James Dickey (New York: Scribner’s, 1987). This book is on sale at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial and at local bookstores.

Friday, March 11, 2022
Live Stream: Phoebe Zerwick presents Beyond Innocence, in conversation with Joe Neff
Mar 11 @ 6:00 pm
online
Image shows a red border around a white box containing the text: Phoebe Zerwick presents Beyond Innocence, in conversation with Joe Neff. Friday, Mar 11. 6 PM ET. Virtual. Next to the text is a photo of Phoebe Zerwick and the front cover of Beyond Innocence.

Join us for an event featuting Phoebe Zerwick, author of Beyond Innocence and Joe Neff, an NC investigative journalist for The Marshall Project. This event is a free event, but registration is required.  Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event. Pre-order Fitz and Cleo Get Creative from Malaprop’s to get a signed and personalized copy. Please request signing and/or personalization in the “comments” section during checkout.

If you decide to attend and purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


Darryl Hunt is a seminal figure in the annals of wrongful convictions, both for what he endured and for his remarkable legacy. A young Black man falsely accused of murdering a white woman in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and sentenced to life in prison, he spent 19 years behind bars before his tireless attorneys were able to prove his innocence. After his exoneration in 2004, as depicted in the acclaimed documentary, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, Hunt became a national advocate for social justice, devoted himself to alleviating the “civil death” almost every ex-prisoner faces upon re-entry into society, and in time inspired lasting reforms, among them a law that allows those on death row to appeal their sentence with evidence of racial bias and a state agency unique to North Carolina that investigates and adjudicates claims of innocence. He was a beacon of hope for so many—until he could no longer bear the burden of the injustice he had experienced and in 2016 took his own life.

Phoebe Zerwick had investigated Hunt’s case as a newspaper reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal in a series of articles that led to his DNA exoneration. Deeply troubled at his death by the idea that she and others who fought for Hunt’s freedom had missed something, she set out to understand the full story of Hunt’s life. In BEYOND INNOCENCE Zerwick restores the humanity of an extraordinary man who had wanted nothing more than to live a decent life, whose story should inspire us all.

Phoebe Zerwick is an award-winning investigative journalist, narrative writer, and college professor. Her writing has appeared in O MagazineNational GeographicThe NationWinston-Salem Journal, and Glamour, among other publications. Her work has been recognized by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Investigative Reporters, and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, Columbia University, and the North Carolina Press Association, and featured in the HBO documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt. She is the director of the journalism program at Wake Forest University.

Monday, March 14, 2022
Mystery Book Club
Mar 14 @ 7:00 pm
online

The club will meet virtually during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you are interested in attending, please email [email protected] for instructions about how to attend the club event.  

Join host Tena Frank for Malaprop’s Mystery Book Club! Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!

The club meets at Malaprop’s on the second Monday of every month at 7:00 pm.

Event date:
Monday, January 10, 2022 – 7:00pm
Monday, February 14, 2022 – 7:00pm
Monday, March 14, 2022 – 7:00pm
Monday, April 11, 2022 – 7:00pm
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
North Asheville Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Mar 15 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
online w/ North Asheville Library

North Asheville Book Club

Join us via Zoom to discuss this month’s book: The Vanishing Half  by Brit Bennett

All book club meetings will be held virtually until further notice.

Registration is required for the Zoom link.

The North Asheville Book Club meets on the 3rd Tuesday of every month.

Live Stream: Joseph Boone presents Furnace Creek in conversation with Elizabeth Kostova
Mar 15 @ 6:00 pm
online
Image shows an orange border around a box containing the text:. Joseph Boone in conversation with Elizabeth Kostova. Next to the text are photos of  the authors and the front cover of the book. Virtual. Tuesday, March. 15, 2022. 6 PM ET.

This event is a free event, but registration is required. Click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


Taking its inspiration from Great Expectations, this novel teases us with the question of what Pip might have been like had he grown up in the American South of the 1960s and 1970s and faced the explosive social issues–racial injustice, a war abroad, womenís and gay rights, class struggle–that galvanized the world in those decades. A guilty encounter with an escaped felon, a summer spent working for an eccentric man with a mysterious past, conflicted erotic feelings for his employerís niece and nephew–these events set the stage for a journey of sexual and moral discovery that takes Newt Seward to New England, Rome, and Paris–all before returning home to confront his lifeís many expectations and disappointments. Deftly combining elements of coming-of-age story, novel of erotic discovery, Southern Gothic fiction, and detection-mystery thriller, FURNACE CREEK leaps the frame of Dickensí masterpiece to provide a contemporary meditation on the perils of desire, ambition, love, loss, and family.

Joseph Boone has written a page-turning novel, a spirited American retelling of an English classic. The American South is our own Dickensian England, and Boone brings both worlds vividly alive with his ebullient prose. A joyously ambitious debut! – Marianne Wiggins, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominee for Evidence of Things Unseen, Joe Boone’s FURNACE CREEK is a funny, moving, and true rendition of everybody’s story: surviving our childhoods, which can be uniquely challenging if you’re Southern, and queer. Boone is a natural novelist, and FURNACE CREEK is a genuine accomplishment.–Michael Cunningham

Joseph Allen Boone grew up in the piedmont foothills of North Carolina and earned his BA from Duke University, where Reynolds Price numbered among his creative writing teachers. Now a professor of English at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, he is the author of three works of non-fiction, a musical adaptation of Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man, and a forthcoming short story collection from BSPG, Conditions of Precarity.  Furnace Creek, his debut novel, was a finalist in four international competitions.

Elizabeth Kostova is the author of the international bestseller The Historian. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress.

Fairview Book Club online
Mar 15 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
online

Fairview Book Club online: Cousins: Connected Through Slavery, a Black Woman and a White Woman Discover Their Past

Cousins: Connected Through Slavery, a Black Woman and a White Woman Discover Their Past

Fairview Evening Book Club will be reading Cousins: Connected Through Slavery, a Black Woman and a White Woman Discover Their Past by Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby for the month of January and discussing it Tuesday, January 18, at 7pm via ZOOM!

This powerful book weaves together the eloquent stories of two impressive women—stories of survival, determination, and awakening, of honesty, spirituality, and success. They give us a detective story and a mystery, a reconciliation and a celebration. A reader will be grateful for all of them. ~Edward L. Ayers, Recipient of the National Humanities Medal

The Fairview Book Club meets via Zoom the third Tuesday of each month at 7pm. Email [email protected] if you would like more information or would like to attend one of our discussions.

Future Books and Book Club Dates:

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas ~ February 15
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson ~ March 15
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murder and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann ~ April 19

Fairview Book Club online – Nothing to See Here
Mar 15 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
online w/ Fairview Library

Fairview Book Club online - Nothing to See Here

Fairview Evening Book Club will be reading Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson for the month of March and discussing it Tuesday, March 15, at 7pm via ZOOM!

Wilson turns a bizarre premise into a beguiling novel about unexpected motherhood. ~ Publishers Weekly

The Fairview Book Club meets via Zoom the third Tuesday of each month at 7pm. Email [email protected] if you would like more information or would like to attend one of our discussions.

Virtual Event for Women’s History Month with Marie Benedict, Kate Moore, Heather Webb, and Katharine Gregorio
Mar 15 @ 7:00 pm
online
Image shows a red and white background with the text: A Virtual Author Event for Women’s History Month. Tuesday, March 15 at 7:00 PM ET. Celebrating Forgotten Women in History.  Photos are shown of the featured authors and their books: HERE HIDDEN GENIUS by MARIE BENEDICT, THE WOMAN THEY COULD NOT SILENCE by KATE MORE, THE NEXT SHIP HOME by HEATHER WEBB, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF KATHERINE CLARK by KATHARINE GREGORIO. Additional text: Hosted by Sourcebooks in partnership with Copper Dog Books, Katy Budget Books, T

Sourcebooks launches its Booklight Events seres with a virtual Women’s History Month event with authors Marie Benedict, Kate Moore, Heather Webb, and Katharine Gregorio and host Mary O’Malley of Skylark Bookshop. They will be speaking about telling the stories of forgotten women in history, showcased in their new releases.

Click here to register for the free online event, hosted by Sourcebooks.

Order books from Malaprop’s below and receive a signed bookplate. 

MARIE BENEDICT is a graduate of Boston College, with a focus in history and art history, and the Boston University School of Law. Marie, author of The Other Einstein, Carnegie’s Maid, The Only Woman in the Room, and Lady Clementine, views herself as an archaeologist, telling the untold stories of women. She is a lawyer in Pittsburgh, where she lives with her family.

About Her Hidden Genius:

The next novel from New York Times bestselling powerhouse Marie Benedict (more than 750,000 sold), shining a light on Rosalind Franklin, the woman who died to make a world-changing scientific discovery of our very DNA, a woman whose thinking was suppressed by the men around her but whose relentless drive gave us profound knowledge of humankind.

KATE MOORE is the award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Radium Girls. A British writer based in London, she has published numerous Sunday Times bestsellers, writing across various genres including history, biography, true crime, gift and humor. She has written more than fifteen books and her work has been translated into more than 12 languages.

About The Woman They Could Not Silence:

From the New York TimesUSA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Radium Girls comes a dark, dramatic, but ultimately inspiring biography of Elizabeth Packard, the forgotten woman whose fight for her own justice brought about lasting change to science and human rights for all women.

HEATHER WEBB is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of seven historical novels. Her novels have been Goodreads Top Picks, honored by the Women’s Fiction Writers Association STAR Award, finalist for the 2020 Goldsboro RNA award finalist in the UK, and more. To date, Heather’s books have been translated to over a dozen languages. She lives in New England with her family and one feisty rabbit.

About The Next Ship Home:

A thoughtful historical novel inspired by true events and for fans of Kristina McMorris and Hazel Gaynor about dark secrets of Ellis Island, when entry promised a better life but often delivered something drastically different, and when immigrant strength and female friendship found ways to triumph even on the darkest days.

KATHARINE GREGORIO, the great-niece of Katharine Clark, holds a BA in History from Dartmouth College, an MSc in International Relations from The London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MBA from The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. She currently works in product marketing for Adobe.

About The Double Life of Katharine Clark:

A gripping biography that illuminates a remarkable chapter of the 20th century, one that shows how an unwavering commitment to truth, justice, and freedom of the press prevailed even in the hardest of circumstances. It is the untold story of Katharine Clark, a woman who forged a career in a male-dominated profession and risked her life to expose the truth about Communism to the world. Written by Katharine’s great-niece.

Mary Webber O’Malley is a writer and a Virtual Bookseller for Skylark Bookshop in Columbia, Missouri, reading and blurbing books across many genres. She is also the Author Liaison and Scheduling Producer for A Mighty Blaze, and co-host of the Blaze Boudoir. When not reading or writing, Mary and her husband love spending time with their grandchildren and tending their little suburban homestead outside Chicago, Illinois. She can be found on FB and Instagram @Blurb_Your_Enthusiasm.

Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Virtual Story Time with Alice Faye Duncan, author of Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free
Mar 16 @ 10:00 am
online
Image shows a purple border around a lighter purple box containing the text: Virtual Story Time with Alice Faye Duncan. Next to the text are photos of the author and the front cover of the book. Wednesday, March 16, 2022. 10 AM ET.

Join us for a special virtual Miss Malaprop’s Storytime event with Alice Faye Duncan!

Duncan will share a short video reading from Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free, read from the book, Just Like A Mama, and lead a poetry writing activity.

Registration is not required for this event, but you can RSVP here to receive a reminder email with the YouTube link. To attend the event, please go to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/MalapropsBookstoreCafe


Every year, Opal looked forward to the Juneteenth picnic–a drumming, dancing, delicious party. She knew from Granddaddy Zak’s stories that Juneteenth celebrated the day the freedom news of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation finally sailed into Texas in 1865–over two years after the president had declared it! But Opal didn’t always see freedom in her Texas town. Then one Juneteenth day when Opal was twelve years old, an angry crowd burned down her brand-new home. This wasn’t freedom at all. She had to do something! Opal Lee spent the rest of her life speaking up for equality and unity. She became a teacher, a charity worker, and a community leader. At the age of 89, she walked from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, D.C., in an effort to gain national recognition for Juneteenth.

Featuring the illustrations of New York Times bestselling illustrator Keturah A. Bobo (I am Enough), Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free celebrates the life and legacy of a modern-day Black leader while sharing a message of hope, unity, joy, and strength.

Alice Faye Duncan is a National Board Certified Teacher, who writes for young learners. Memory is her motivation. She writes to help children remember important moments from African American history. Her books are celebrated for vivid imagery and lyrical texts that sound like music. Alice’s most popular titles include A Song for Gwendolyn BrooksJust Like a MamaHoney Baby Sugar Child; and Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop, which received a 2019 Coretta Scott King Honor Medal. Alice lives in Memphis, Tennessee, where at a young age, her mother nurtured her writing talent with prayer, poetry books, and praise. Her website is www.alicefayeduncan.com.

Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Language and Storytelling Panel
Mar 16 @ 11:00 am – 12:15 pm
online

The Humanities Program at UNC Asheville invites you to a virtual panel of “Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Language and Storytelling.”

Featured panelists will include Sol Neely, Juan G. Sánchez Martínez, Gilliam Jackson aka Doyi, and Trey Adcock (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ, enrolled Cherokee Nation) – a group whose work and experience is intimately informed by and connected to Indigenous cultures of North and South America. Among other things, the panel will discuss some of the ways Indigenous cultures see and understand the world, how Indigenous languages reflect worldviews rooted in relationships, and how storytelling serves to communicate knowledge across generations.

Tune in to the panel on Zoom.

And later that afternoon, from 5 – 7 pm, students, staff and faculty are invited to attend an in-person fire circle at Mullen Park to engage in informal conversation around the themes of language, storytelling, and indigenous worldviews. These events are made possible with support from the Humanities Program, Center for Diversity Education, Center for Native Health, Key Center for Community Engaged Learning, Siwar Mayu, and assistance from CTL.

 

About the panelists:
Sol Neely, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is the director of composition at Heritage University (located on the Yakama nation). He earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University’s Philosophy & Literature program (2009), with specializations in Theory and Cultural Studies, Native American Literature and Critical Indigenous Studies, Composition Theory, Ethics, and Literary Studies. In 2012, Neely started a prison education program called The Flying University, bringing university students inside the prison for mutual and collaborative study.

Juan G. Sánchez Martínez grew up in Bakatá/Bogotá, Colombian Andes. He dedicates his creative and scholarly writing to Indigenous cultural expressions from Abiayala (the Americas.) His book of poetry, Altamar, was awarded in 2016 with the National Prize Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. He collaborates and translates for the online publication Siwar Mayu, A River of Hummingbirds. He is currently an Associate Professor of Languages and Literatures, and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

Gilliam Jackson aka Doyi is a full-blood Cherokee fluent speaker. He has led and developed several nonprofit organizations during almost 50 years of his professional life. He started teaching sixth grade and is currently teaching at the University of North Carolina Asheville and Stanford. Early in his professional career, he realized the need to preserve the history, language and culture of his isolated community. He has audio and video recorded several oral histories of the Snowbird Community. He is presently working part-time as Executive Director of Snowbird Cherokee Traditions, which operates a summer and after-school Cherokee Language Program.

Trey Adcock (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ, enrolled Cherokee Nation), PhD, is an associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and the director of American Indian & Indigenous Studies at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He was named one of seven national Public Engagement Fellows in 2018-2019 by the Whiting Foundation for his work documenting a Bureau of Indian Affairs run day school in the TutiYi “Snowbird” Cherokee Community. Adcock’s work has been published in the Journal of American Indian Education, Teaching Tolerance and Readings in Race, Ethnicity and Immigration. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Native Health and sits on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Cherokee Studies.

History Book Club
Mar 16 @ 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Enka-Candler Library

History Book Club

Join us for the Enka-Candler History Book Club! We read historical fiction and non-fiction books.

The next book for discussion is, “Dress Codes: How the laws of fashion made history” by Richard Thompson Ford.

All newcomers are welcome. We will be meeting in the library community room. Books are available for pick up at the front desk. To register for this program please email [email protected] or call 250-4758.