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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us for our monthly poetry event featuring three poets. This month, we welcome Fleda Brown, Rita Quillen, and Gretchen Primack. Click here to RSVP for this event. On the day of the event, we will send a reminder email with the link required to attend.

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

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

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

—

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

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

—

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

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

Enjoy a one-of-a-kind hike in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains with our friendly llamas! Hikers will learn about our famous llamas’ interesting histories and how to safely handle the animals before heading out on a hike with gorgeous mountaintop views on our private trails.

Each family/ group gets 1 to 3 lovable llamas to share and there’s plenty of time for llama cuddles and, of course, llama selfies! This moderate hike is around 1 mile long and does require requires walking uphill on rocky and sometimes slippery terrain.

Ages: We welcome all ages on our llama hikes and children 5 and under are free. When you make your reservation, please let us know if you have anyone under that age in the notes section.

Enjoy a one-of-a-kind hike in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains with our friendly llamas! Hikers will learn about our famous llamas’ interesting histories and how to safely handle the animals before heading out on a hike with gorgeous mountaintop views on our private trails.

Each family/ group gets 1 to 3 lovable llamas to share and there’s plenty of time for llama cuddles and, of course, llama selfies! This moderate hike is around 1 mile long and does require requires walking uphill on rocky and sometimes slippery terrain.
We welcome all ages on our llama hikes and children 5 and under are free. When you make your reservation, please let us know if you have anyone under that age in the notes section.

Led by: Mark English aka “The Llama Dude”

Enjoy a one-of-a-kind hike in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains with our friendly llamas! Hikers will learn about our famous llamas’ interesting histories and how to safely handle the animals before heading out on a hike with gorgeous mountaintop views on our private trails.

Each family/ group gets 1 to 3 lovable llamas to share and there’s plenty of time for llama cuddles and, of course, llama selfies! This moderate hike is around 1 mile long and does require requires walking uphill on rocky and sometimes slippery terrain.

Duration: The total experience lasts about an hour and a half

Ages: We welcome all ages on our llama hikes and children 5 and under are free. When you make your reservation, please let us know if you have anyone under that age in the notes section.

Led by: Mark English aka “The Llama Dude”

Come on out for a day of fun. We’ll be hiking a bit and learning archery at the same time. Bring your own bow or use one of the ones we provide.

Learn:
-Bow fundamentals
-Different aiming techniques
-Bow care and safety

For The People Academy is an inclusive high level skills training company based in Asheville. Our goal is to create heroes in our own communities.

Baxter Creek to Mt. Sterling 12.2 miles | Difficult Wildflowers, Trail Restoration

2021 CLASSIC HIKES OF THE SMOKIES

Discover America’s most-visited national park with a guided day hike! The Classic Hikes of the Smokies feature interpretation of the history, flora, and fauna of park trails. Hikes vary in distance, difficulty, and location within the park to provide a comprehensive overview of the Smokies, exposing hikers to high Appalachian vistas, streams teeming with aquatic life, the best collection of log structures on the Eastern Seaboard, and much more.

After completing registration…
You will receive an email the Friday before the hike with directions, and more information. All hikes begin at 9 a.m

LEAF Retreat is created to Rejuvenate the soul and Replenish our inspiration in this beautiful secluded place, Lake Eden, in which you can relax and get away.
It’s less than 1/5 the attendee size of Festival while maintaining the same footprint which gives you the feeling of having the place to yourself. Connecting with the outdoors is an essential part of the experience. Stages are smaller, more intimate with meet and greets and a focus on local and regional artists.
Great music in open air settings, special featured performances with LatinX artists, along with workshops, panel discussions and activities to recharge your spirits. Prepare for a time of reflection, reconnection, healing, friendship and fun in a safe healthy beautiful setting.
*Please note: This is a private event for LEAF members only.*
Not a member? Don’t worry! You can easily become a member for as little as $50 a year. Simply visit this link to join: https://theleaf.org/give-to-leaf/