Presented by Bee City USA- Hendersonville and Bullington Gardens

For educators: teachers, camp counselors, home-school parents, childcare professionals, summer program leaders, and more, the Pollinator Exploration Kit provides excellent tools. Bee City USA – Hendersonville is eager to help you share the wonder of pollinators with children you teach. The kit includes sets of 12 sturdy child-size insect nets, special bug capture bubbles, bug boxes with magnifying lids, and magnifying glasses. Two pop-up insect habitats and two sets of laminated fold-out field guides (NC Trees & Wildflowers, NC Butterflies & Moths, Bees & Other Pollinators) are also included. The kit can be loaned for up to a week (as available) and may be picked up and returned weekdays 9am-4pm.

Pick-up location:

Bullington Gardens, 95 Upper Red Oak Trail, Hendersonville.

Cost: no charge

Reservation needed: contact [email protected] to check availability and reserve the dates to borrow the Pollinator Exploration Kit.

Get ready for a week of laughter and creativity in our theater camp! In this class, you’ll discover the exciting world of improvisation and learn how to think on your feet. We’ll play tons of theater games that will challenge your creativity and bring out your silly side. With our guidance, you’ll create scenes from scratch using your own unique ideas and imagination. Using your body and voice, you’ll learn how to create dynamic and memorable characters that will leave your audience in awe. And at the end of it all, you’ll have the chance to showcase your talent in a special performance for your family and friends. Whether you’re a seasoned performer or just starting out, this class is perfect for anyone who loves to have fun and express themselves through the art of theater. Sign up now for a camp you’ll never forget!

Class cost: $180

Min students: 7

Max students: 20

Class Dates: June 26-30

Time: 12 pm-3 pm

Rising 6th-9th Grade (10-14 years old)

Forest Farming Tour dates announced!   Most farms in Western NC and the Southern Appalachians contain forested land. These forest farm tours and on-farm workshops aim to train beginning forest farmers and land stewards, both novice and experienced, to understand the wealth and history of woodland botanicals and forest products.   Additionally, this series will explore the opportunities for land stewardship and possible income streams within existing farm operations while also promoting health, respect, and diversity for forests.   Integrating Trees and Grazing Livestock In A Silvopasture System Join Noah and Lyric for a tour of Wild East Farm, where they have established ~12 acres of crop tree plantings designed for pasturing livestock throughout. Learn about the fundamentals of silvopasture and experience firsthand how to plan for longterm tree regeneration and intensive livestock management.

Explore hands on activities and experiments while we learn about the Science of Bubbles or the Science of Sound. Every other week we will play and learn together using a variety of tools, instruments, and toys. AMOS has a plethora of science to intrigue the zeal of every learner!

The Malaprop’s Book Club, hosted by Jay Jacoby, explores a diverse selection of fiction and nonfiction books determined by member suggestion. Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!

The club meets the first Wednesday of every month at 7:00 PM. The club will meet virtually until further notice. To join the club, please email [email protected]

Crime and Politics Book Club

The N.C. Cooperative Extension, Transylvania County Center and Conserving Carolina are offering a series of lectures, field trips, and service days to better acquaint the public with the French Broad River, and give you ways to explore and act on its behalf.

The fifth part of our series: EXPLORE A float on the French Broad River!

Let’s get on the river! Join us on a class 1 and 2 urban float on the French Broad River through the River Arts section in Asheville. Joining us will be Trevor Freeman from the Asheville Museum of History, discussing the history of interaction between people and the French Broad River. Jack Henderson of Mountain True will discuss ways we are currently addressing challenges to keep the river healthy.

This event is open to the general public, and the fee is the cost of membership to the organization of your choice. For current AMoH members, the discounted rate is $20. We will be using both inflatable rafts and kayaks. A meeting location and recommended items will be announced prior to the event.

Swannanoa, such a beautiful name.

Along the river is written Western North Carolina’s history from its earliest years into the future. Archaic era people lived by the river on Warren Wilson’s campus 4,000 years ago. The raging flood of 1791, five feet higher than the record flood of 1916, convinced Buncombe County’s first commission to locate the court house up on a plateau rather than where the Swannanoa joins the French Broad. Utterly brutal abuse of Black Americans as convict labor drove rails through Swannanoa Gap in 1879 bringing prosperity to the valley. Train transportation and cool clean water drew industry ranging from Beacon Blankets revered for quality and community citizenship but also Chemtronics, now a brownfield site. Trains also introduced tourists. And once the world became aware of this sublime valley from Ridgecrest to Biltmore Village, the communities we so enjoy today blossomed.
On July 7 from 5-6pm John E. Ross, author of Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time (UTenn Press 2021), will take us on a tour of the French Broad watershed summarizing its natural and cultural history from the origin of the mountains, through the evolution of the river and the populations who’ve lived along it, and into the future. Through the Mountains was a finalist for the 2022 Reed Environmental Writing Award sponsored by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the 2022 Thomas Wolfe Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association.

Join the Blue Ridge Audubon, a chapter of the National Audubon Society for their monthly bird walk at Jackson Park, a renowned
birding location. On the 2nd Saturday of each month, meet at the Administration Building parking lot, located on Glover Street,
and join the group to see the many wonderful birds found at Jackson Park, Hendersonville’s largest park.8-10:00am.
828-684-0812. Free.

Jackson Park Bird Outing, 8am-10am, Join the Blue Ridge Audubon Society for their monthly
bird walk at Jackson Park, meet at the Administration Building parking lot, located on Glover Street, and join the group to see the
many wonderful birds found at Hendersonville’s largest park

Long for a flock of fine feathered friends, but aren’t sure how to get started? Allow author and teacher Ashley English to show you how the way.

In this lecture, we’ll gather together to learn the basics of keeping a flock of backyard chickens. Ashley will discuss and provide helpful information on what to consider before you start, breed selection, housing, feeding, and more!

Ashley English is the author of 11 books, on topics ranging from raising chickens to canning & preserving, and from hosting potlucks to homemade health & wellness products. From handcrafted pies, to natural crafting, Ashley is enamored with all things DIY, slow, and fun! She lives in a forested cove in the mountains of North Carolina with her husband Glenn (with whom she works together full-time), their two young sons, Huxley and Alistair, and a menagerie of animals.

The July installment of our monthly poetry reading series, coordinated by Mildred Barya, will feature readings by Philip Belcher, James Davis May, James Dickson, and Sara Moore Wagner.

This is a hybrid event with limited in-store seating and the option to attend online. The event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.  

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

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

All of the poets’ new books will be available to purchase in-store at the event. You may also call us at 828-254-6734 or order online below. 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!

Philip Belcher is the Vice President of Programs for The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina in Asheville and the author of The Flies and Their Lovely Names, which won the South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Prize. A graduate of Furman University, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and Duke University School of Law (JD), he also earned an MFA in poetry from Converse College, and is the recipient of both the Porter Fleming Prize in Poetry and Shenandoah’s Carter Prize for the Essay. Belcher’s poems and critical prose have appeared in numerous journals, including The Southeast Review, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He also served as an Advisory and Contributing Editor for Shenandoah. For more, visit https://philipbelcher.net

“Nothing dies as slowly as a scene,” Richard Hugo once said, and that line came to me often as I read these excellent, often elegiac, poems. Whether writing of youth or old age, of photographs or place, Philip Belcher creates images that endure: windblown, burning leaves become “little kites of fire”, words “bulging creels of speech”. Yet the artistry is always in service of conveying the depths of the human heart. Gentle Slaughter is a beautiful and memorable collection.” —Ron Rash

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James Davis May is the author of the poetry collection Unquiet Things, and a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing. Originally from Pittsburgh, he now lives in Macon, Georgia, where he directs the creative writing program at Mercer University. His second poetry collection, Unusually Grand Ideas, was published this year by Louisiana State University Press. For more, visit https://jamesdavismay.com

“James Davis May’s second book begins quietly, chronicling a series of losses, then escalates into a harrowingly exact, artfully rendered portrait of depression: ‘I needed a darkness I’d probably survive / to escape the one I knew I wouldn’t.’ May nails the paralyzing character of his illness and somehow manages, through art and ardor, to negotiate with despair, climbing toward a position that acknowledges darkness but does not deny hope. ‘Forgive me, Love, my difficulties with joy,’ he writes to his young daughter, and to himself and his grateful readers, ‘sometimes the world doesn’t disappoint.’ Unusually Grand Ideas is wrenching, genuine, and superb.” —Mark Doty

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James Dickson teaches English and Creative Writing at Germantown High School in Mississippi. An MFA graduate from the Bennington Writing Seminars, he is the recipient of Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships, was named High School Literary Magazine Advisor of the Year by the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, and was invited to speak at the National Educators Association 50th anniversary celebration. His poems, book reviews, and essays appear in The Common, Ruminate, Hospital Drive, The Louisiana Review, Spillway, Slant, Poetry Quarterly, McSweeney’s, Sylvia, and other publications.  Some Sweet Vandal, his first collection of poems, was published by Kelsay Books in May.  He lives in Jackson with his wife, their son, and a small menagerie of animals.

“If you’re weary of ironic poems that wink at the camera, welcome to the ardent-hearted world of James Dickson. In Some Sweet Vandal, Dickson finds delight and depth in the everyday, and always in fresh language. We meet a high school teacher who reflects on Sylvia Plath during a school shooter training, a lifeguard in a camp for mentally handicapped adults, a father imagining his toddler’s passage into a future where one day he’ll deliver his eulogy. These are poems that, with skill and insight, connect us with our humanity, and they are a tremendous gift.” ―Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs

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Sara Moore Wagner is the author of the poetry collection Hillbilly Madonna (2022 Driftwood Press prize winner), a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Swan Wife also won the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Sixth Finch, Waxwing, Nimrod, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She lives in West Chester, Ohio with her husband Jon, and children Cohen, Daisy, and Vivienne. For more, visit www.saramoorewagner.com

“Say Dorothy Allison had a baby with Hans Christian Andersen. That ain’t right—I know it, I know—but just say. And say that girl child grows up to wander the tracks, all the while lining up pennies to be smashed on the rails, all the while picking up shed antlers and discarded needles along the berm. And say here comes a fast train, a Christ-haunted train, a train heavy with the freight of West Virginia, a cargo of such great violence and great tenderness that you know the girl is standing far, far too close to all that’s barreling past. She stands so close the force of it blows back her hair; she stands so close you’re sure she’ll get hit and won’t survive. But she doesn’t step back. No, she stands her ground. This, dear reader, is Sara Wagner, writing this book. These poems ache and ache and ache, but not once do they flinch. Read them and prepare yourself to be wrung out, to be redeemed, to be fit to be tied.” –Nickole Brown, author of To Those Who Were Our First God