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.

Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing
Jun 1 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Hi-Wire Brewing
Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing

It’s time again for EYLA to host our ever popular Game Night! We are proud and excited to have Hi-Wire Brewing RAD, in its newest location, to host our group.
Please bring your favorite games to share and your competitive spirit to make it a fun and exciting evening of game play.
Please be aware that this and all future Game Nights will be held at the River Arts District location. Please Venmo Norque Smith for fees (1.00) or pay in person Cash to the host.

Thursday, June 2, 2022
Crime and Politics Book Club
Jun 2 @ 7:00 pm
online

Join host and Malaprop’s Bookseller Patricia Furnish to discuss a range of books across true crime and public affairs. The club meets the first Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. Click here to learn more about the club, view important news, and find the pick for this month.

Friday, June 3, 2022
Friends of the Library BIG Book Sale!
Jun 3 @ 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Enka-Candler Library

The Friends of the Enka-Candler Library Big Book Sale is back!

They’ll be hosting two days of sales from the Library community room. Stock up for summer and for the rest of the year. Plenty of deals on books you don’t want to miss from children’s books to adult, plus music, DVDs and tote bags.

All proceeds from the sale go back to the Enka-Candler Library from programs to furniture.

Author Reading: Meta Commerse, author of Womaning
Jun 3 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
West Asheville Library
Author Reading: Meta Commerse, author of Womaning.
Author Reading: Meta Commerse, author of Womaning.

Meta Commerse is a Blues Doula. A former professor of History and English, she’s an award-winning author. Among her works are short stories, essays, poetry, numerous newspaper articles, one stage play, her story medicine novel, The Mending Time, and memoir Womaning. She earned her MFA degree at Goddard College in Vermont. Meta is a social entrepreneur, creator of Story Medicine Worldwide, a community-based healing movement. She is a performing artist, singing jazz, blues, and gospel music. She is the mother of three adult children and grandmother to three young adult grandsons.

Saturday, June 4, 2022
D+D in the Library with Raj
Jun 4 @ 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Pack Memorial Library

Join us for some Dungeons & Dragons at Pack Memorial Library!

Sign-up is required. Email Raj at [email protected] to request attendance.

Monday, June 6, 2022
Music Bingo Mondays
Jun 6 @ 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm
Down Dog Yoga Studio and Dog Bar

Music Bingo Mondays

Join us every Monday night for Singo (Musical Bingo)!

Singo will run from 7-8:15 pm.

No reservations needed, just get ready for a good time and a chance to win some Down Dog prizes!

Tuesday, June 7, 2022
ONLINE- Enka-Candler Library Evening Book Club
Jun 7 @ 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.

Drag Bingo with Calcutta
Jun 7 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Asheville Beauty Academy

Join us every first and third Tuesday of each month for Drag Bingo! Hosted by the amazingly beautiful inside and out Calcutta! Try out classic games and also some not so conventional games. Play for fun or play to win, the prizes are always topped with laughter. Ages 21+.

Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Animal Birthday Party
Jun 8 @ 11:00 am – 3:30 pm
Grandfather Mountain

Kodiak, a cinnamon phase black bear at Grandfather Mountain, eats special bear cake during the park's Animal Birthday Party.

Grandfather Mountain celebrates the birthdays of its resident animals with games, contests, crafts and surprises. The park’s habitat staff will prepare a fun-filled afternoon for guests, as well as programs to celebrate the park’s furry and feathered inhabitants. Included with admission

Discussion Bound: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly by Joshua Rivkin
Jun 8 @ 12:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Cy Twombly was a man obsessed with myth and history—including his own. Shuttling between stunning homes in Italy and the United States where he perfected his room-size canvases, he managed his public image carefully and rarely gave interviews.

Upon first seeing Twombly’s remarkable paintings, writer Joshua Rivkin became obsessed himself with the mysterious artist, and began chasing every lead, big or small—anything that might illuminate those works, or who Twombly really was.

Now, after unprecedented archival research and years of interviews, Rivkin has reconstructed Twombly’s life, from his time at the legendary Black Mountain College to his canonization in a 1994 MoMA retrospective; from his heady explorations of Rome in the 1950s with Robert Rauschenberg to the ongoing efforts to shape his legacy after his death.

Including previously unpublished photographs, Chalk presents a more personal and searching type of biography than we’ve ever encountered, and brings to life a more complex Twombly than we’ve ever known.

DISCUSSION BOUND

This monthly discussion is a place to exchange ideas about readings that relate to artworks and the art world, and to learn from and about each other. Books are available at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café for a 10% discount. To add your name to our Discuss

Thursday, June 9, 2022
Meet the Author- Talk and Q+A with Jonathan Baurer
Jun 9 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Enka-Candler Library

Join us in the Library community room for an informational session and Q&A with author, Jonathan Baurer.

He’ll be answering your questions and discussing his new book, Positive Parenting Solutions to Raise Highly Sensitive Children: Understanding Your Child’s Emotions and How to Respond with Radical Compassion, Love, and Confidence. Books will be available for purchase.

Bio:
Jonathan Baurer, author, certified life coach, and entrepreneur based out of Asheville, North Carolina, is the co-founder of Exploring Changes, a mindset life-coaching program and blended-publishing house. Jonathan helps clients achieve their highest goals and live the life of their dreams by bridging the gap between where they are, and where they want to be. Jonathan is the author of two bestselling non-fiction books, helping people live more fully in happiness and love. Jonathan is inspired by his passion of continued learning, living a life of adventure, and creating authentic connections with others.

This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Enka-Candler Library. All library programs are free and everyone is welcome. We hope you’ll join us

Friday, June 10, 2022
Movies in the Park: Space Jam: A New Legacy
Jun 10 @ 7:00 pm
Pack Square Park

movies in the park

June 10: Space Jam: A New Legacy (rated PG for some language and cartoon violence)

– When LeBron James and his young son Dom are trapped in a digital space by a rogue A.I., LeBron must get them home safe by leading Bugs, Lola Bunny and the whole gang of notoriously undisciplined Looney Tunes to victory over the A.I.’s digitized champions on the court: a powered-up roster of professional basketball stars as you’ve never seen them before. It’s Tunes versus Goons in the highest-stakes challenge of his life, that will redefine LeBron’s bond with his son and shine a light on the power of being yourself.

If You Go

  • All movies begin at dusk in Pack Square Park on 80 Court Plaza in downtown Asheville.
  • Rec n Roll Fun Zone programming starts at 7 p.m.
  • Pets, smoking, and alcohol are prohibited.
  • Free parking is available in marked spaces on city streets and in city-owned lots on Marjorie Street after 6 p.m.
Saturday, June 11, 2022
Friends of the East Asheville Library Bag O’ Books Sale
Jun 11 @ 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
East Asheville Library

Join us for a used book sale on Saturday, June 11 from 10am to 3pm. Proceeds from the sale will benefit future programs and other assistance to the East Asheville Public Library.

Questions? E-mail [email protected].

Monday, June 13, 2022
Music Bingo Mondays
Jun 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm
Down Dog Yoga Studio and Dog Bar

Music Bingo Mondays

Join us every Monday night for Singo (Musical Bingo)!

Singo will run from 7-8:15 pm.

No reservations needed, just get ready for a good time and a chance to win some Down Dog prizes!

Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing
Jun 15 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Hi-Wire Brewing

Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing

It’s time again for EYLA to host our ever popular Game Night! We are proud and excited to have Hi-Wire Brewing RAD, in its newest location, to host our group.
Please bring your favorite games to share and your competitive spirit to make it a fun and exciting evening of game play.
Please be aware that this and all future Game Nights will be held at the River Arts District location. Please Venmo Norque Smith for fees (1.00) or pay in person Cash to the host.

Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing
Jun 15 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Hi-Wire Brewing
Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing

It’s time again for EYLA to host our ever popular Game Night! We are proud and excited to have Hi-Wire Brewing RAD, in its newest location, to host our group.
Please bring your favorite games to share and your competitive spirit to make it a fun and exciting evening of game play.
Please be aware that this and all future Game Nights will be held at the River Arts District location. Please Venmo Norque Smith for fees (1.00) or pay in person Cash to the host.

Sunday, June 19, 2022
ReadWNC Series – Guests on Earth
Jun 19 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
online w/ Western North Carolina Historical Association

ReadWNC Series - Guests on Earth

Join the Western North Carolina Historical Association (WNCHA) for the second of three events in our ReadWNC series! With authors and historians, we will explore the facts behind the fiction in these books centered in WNC. In this series, authors and historians explore the facts behind the fiction in books centered in WNC. We encourage you to read the books in advance and bring your own questions to the discussion. You can find all three books at Malaprop’s Bookstore here in Asheville. This event airs live via Zoom, Tuesday, July 19 from 6:00-7pm.

Our series continues with Lee Smith’s novel Guests on Earth, set at Asheville’s Highland Hospital during the period when Zelda Fitzgerald resided there, before she and eight other women perished in a terrible fire in 1948. Smith says: “In this novel I offer a solution for the unsolved mystery of that fire, along with a group of characters both imagined and real, and a series of events leading up to the tragedy. My narrator is a younger patient named Evalina Toussaint, daughter of a New Orleans exotic dancer. Evalina is a talented pianist who connects to Zelda on many levels as she plays accompaniment for the many concerts, theatricals, and dances constantly being held at Highland Hospital.”

 

About the Presenters:

Dr. Alaina Doten is the executive director of the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She has a PhD in history and art history from the University of Melbourne.

Monday, June 20, 2022
Music Bingo Mondays
Jun 20 @ 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm
Down Dog Yoga Studio and Dog Bar

Music Bingo Mondays

Join us every Monday night for Singo (Musical Bingo)!

Singo will run from 7-8:15 pm.

No reservations needed, just get ready for a good time and a chance to win some Down Dog prizes!

Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Drag Bingo with Calcutta
Jun 21 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Asheville Beauty Academy

Join us every first and third Tuesday of each month for Drag Bingo! Hosted by the amazingly beautiful inside and out Calcutta! Try out classic games and also some not so conventional games. Play for fun or play to win, the prizes are always topped with laughter. Ages 21+.

Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Valerie Nieman presents In the Lonely Backwater in conversation with Jamie Mason
Jun 22 @ 6:00 pm
online w/ Malaprops
Valerie Nieman presents In the Lonely Backwater in conversation with Jamie Mason. VIRTUAL. Wednesday, June 22, 2022 at 6pm ET. Next to the text are photos of the participants and the cover of the featured book.

UPDATE: This will be a fully virtual event. Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

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


All seventeen-year-old Maggie Warshauer wants is to leave her stifled life in Filliyaw Creek behind and head to college. An outsider at school and uncertain of her own sexual identity, Maggie longs to start again somewhere new. Inspired by a long-dead biologist’s journals, scientific-minded Maggie spends her days sailing, exploring, and categorizing life around her. But when her beautiful cousin Charisse disappears on prom night and is found dead at the marina where Maggie lives, Maggie’s plans begin to unravel. A mysterious stranger begins stalking her and a local detective on the case leaves her struggling to hold on to her secrets—her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s abandonment, a boyfriend who may or may not exist, and her own actions on prom night. As the detective gets closer to finding the truth, and Maggie’s stalker is closing in, she is forced to come to terms with the one person who might hold the answers—herself.

A former farmer, sailor, and journalist, Valerie Nieman is the author of five novels, one short story collection, three collections of poetry, and two poetry chapbooks. To the Bones, her genre-bending novel about Appalachia published by West Virginia University Press in 2019, was a finalist for the Manly Wade Wellman Award and the Killer Nashville Award. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals including MonkeybicycleStorySouth, and The Georgia Review and received fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council and the NEA, among others. Nieman recently retired from teaching at North Carolina A&T. Learn more at valnieman.com.

Jamie Mason was born in Oklahoma City and grew up in Washington, DC. She’s most often reading and writing, but in the life left over, she enjoys films, Formula 1 racing, football, traveling, and, conversely, staying at home. Jamie lives with her husband and two daughters in the mountains of western North Carolina. She is the author of Three Graves FullMonday’s Lie, and The Hidden Things.

Notorious HBC (History Book Club)
Jun 22 @ 7:00 pm
online

This club meets in-person and virtually. If you are interested in attending, please email [email protected] for more info and instructions! 

Join host and Malaprop’s bookseller Patricia Furnish to discuss a range of books across different periods of history. The club tackles challenging subjects, hence “NOTORIOUS.”  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 3rd Thursday of every month at 7:00 pm.

Thursday, June 23, 2022
A Day with Brie Arthur and Carolina Native Nursery’s Founder Bill Jones: Nursery tour and Presentation
Jun 23 @ 10:00 am
Carolina Native Nursery

Picture

DescriptionKnown for her leadership with the national Foodscape movement and her lively, information packed presentations, Brie Arthur is a celebrated speaker and bestselling author. With two decades of experience as a professional horticulturist, propagator, and communicator Brie shares her expertise with audiences around the country and is a correspondent on the Emmy award winning PBS Television show “Growing a Greener World”. Follow Brie’s gardening journey through her YouTube channel, Brie the Plant Lady. One garden at a time, every little bit of habitat makes our world a better place.

A Day with Brie Arthur Nursery tour and Presentation
Jun 23 @ 2:00 pm
The Butler Room at the Botanical Gardens of Asheville

Picture

DescriptionKnown for her leadership with the national Foodscape movement and her lively, information packed presentations, Brie Arthur is a celebrated speaker and bestselling author. With two decades of experience as a professional horticulturist, propagator, and communicator Brie shares her expertise with audiences around the country and is a correspondent on the Emmy award winning PBS Television show “Growing a Greener World”. Follow Brie’s gardening journey through her YouTube channel, Brie the Plant Lady. One garden at a time, every little bit of habitat makes our world a better place.

Monday, June 27, 2022
Music Bingo Mondays
Jun 27 @ 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm
Down Dog Yoga Studio and Dog Bar

Music Bingo Mondays

Join us every Monday night for Singo (Musical Bingo)!

Singo will run from 7-8:15 pm.

No reservations needed, just get ready for a good time and a chance to win some Down Dog prizes!

Science Fiction Book Club
Jun 27 @ 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!

Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Summer BINGO for the whole family!
Jun 28 @ 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Fairview Library

Come one, come all—come kids and parents and teens and grandparents and…did I mention that everyone is invited? It’s BINGO time at the library! There will be corny jokes, zany prizes, and hardcore competition! Bring your neighbors! Bring your kids! Bring your neighbors kids!

Prizes donated by the Friends of Fairview Library!

Romance Book Club
Jun 28 @ 7:00 pm
zoom

Romance Book Club is a space to celebrate love in literature. Whether it’s set in early 1800s London, a distant planet years into the future, a fantasy world of magic, or our own contemporary universe, we are here for the stories that end with a happily-ever-after (or at least a happily-for-now).

Meetings will take place at 7:00 PM ET on the last Tuesday of each month via Zoom. Please visit the Romance Bookclub page for the monthly selection, and email Samantha at [email protected] for the link to join.

Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Hybrid event: Brent Martin presents George Masa’s Wild Vision
Jun 29 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Malaprops Bookstore and online
Image contains the text: Brent Martin presents George Masa's Wild Vision. Hybrid. Wednesday, June 29, 2022 at 6pm ET. Next to the text are photos of the author and the cover of the featured book.

This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited amount of seats available to attend the event in-store. Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.

Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.

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


Self-taught photographer George Masa (born Masahara Iizuka in Osaka, Japan), arrived in Asheville, North Carolina at the turn of the twentieth century amid a period of great transition in the southern Appalachians.
Masa’s photographs from the 1920s and early 1930s are stunning windows into an era where railroads hauled out the remaining old-growth timber with impunity, new roads were blasted into hillsides, and an activist community emerged to fight for a new national park. Masa began photographing the nearby mountains and helping to map the Appalachian Trail, capturing this transition like no other photographer of his time. His images, along with his knowledge of the landscape, became a critical piece of the argument for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, compelling John D. Rockefeller to donate $5 million for initial land purchases. Despite being hailed as the “Ansel Adams of the Smokies,” Masa died, destitute and unknown, in 1933.
In George Masa’s Wild Vision: A Japanese Immigrant Imagines Western North Carolina, poet and environmental organizer Brent Martin explores the locations Masa visited, using first-person narratives to contrast, lament, and exalt the condition of the landscape the photographer so loved and worked to interpret and protect. The book includes seventy-five of Masa’s photographs, accompanied by Martin’s reflections on Masa’s life and work.

Brent Martin is the author of three chapbook collections of poetry and of The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains: Essays on Journeys Past and Present. His poetry and essays have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, Pisgah Review, Tar River Poetry, Chattahoochee Review, Eno Journal, New Southerner, Kudzu Literary Journal, Smoky Mountain News and elsewhere. He lives in the Cowee community in Western North Carolina, where he and his wife, Angela Faye Martin, run Alarka Institute.

Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing
Jun 29 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Hi-Wire Brewing
Game Night at Hi-Wire Brewing

It’s time again for EYLA to host our ever popular Game Night! We are proud and excited to have Hi-Wire Brewing RAD, in its newest location, to host our group.
Please bring your favorite games to share and your competitive spirit to make it a fun and exciting evening of game play.
Please be aware that this and all future Game Nights will be held at the River Arts District location. Please Venmo Norque Smith for fees (1.00) or pay in person Cash to the host.

Foodie Book Club
Jun 29 @ 7:00 pm
online

The Foodie Book Club is a club about food writing. The club meets on the last Wednesday of every month at 7:00 PM.  Click here for details and monthly picks!

Wednesday, October 26, 2022 – 7:00pm
Wednesday, November 30, 2022 – 7:00pm
Wednesday, December 28, 2022 – 7:00pm