Calendar of Events

This is a hybrid event, meaning it will be live-streamed from Malaprop’s and there will be limited in-store seating if you would prefer to attend the event in person. This event is free, but registration is required.

Please click here to RSVP for this event and read the registration page carefully for information about the in-person attendance option. 

If you decide 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!

Two generations have passed since the publication of Wilma Dykeman’s landmark environmental history, The French Broad. In Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time, John Ross updates that seminal book with groundbreaking new research. More than the story of a single river, Through the Mountains covers the entire watershed from its headwaters in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains to its mouth in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The French Broad watershed has faced new perils and seen new discoveries since 1955, when The French Broad was published. Geologists have learned that the Great Smoky Mountains are not among the world’s oldest as previously thought; climatologists and archaeologists have traced the dramatic effects of global warming and cooling on the flora, fauna, and human habitation in the watershed; and historians have deepened our understanding of enslaved peoples once thought not to be a part of the watershed’s history. Even further, this book documents how the French Broad and its tributaries were abused by industrialists, and how citizens fought to mitigate the pollution.

Through the Mountains also takes readers to notable historic places: the hidden mound just inside the gate of Biltmore where Native Americans celebrated the solstices; the once-secret radio telescope site above Rosman where NASA eavesdropped on Russian satellites; and the tiny hamlet of Gatlinburg where Phi Beta Phi opened its school for mountain women in 1912.

Wilma Dykeman once asked what the river had meant to the people who lived along it. In the close of Through the Mountains, Ross reframes that question: For 14,000 years the French Broad and its tributaries have nurtured human habitation. What must we start doing now to ensure it will continue to nourish future generations? Answering this question requires a knowledge of the French Broad’s history, an understanding of its contemporary importance, and a concern for the watershed’s sustainable future. Through the Mountains fulfills these three criteria, and, in many ways, presents the larger story of America’s freshwater habitats through the incredible history of the French Broad.

JOHN ROSS, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, is the author of more than a dozen books exploring the interaction of humans with the natural world, including Rivers of Restoration and, most recently, The Forecast for D-day and the Weatherman behind Ike’s Greatest Gamble.

Like most of our events, this event is free, but registration is required. Click here to RSVP for this 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 can also support us by making a donation below. Thanks!

Lora Beth Johnson will sign and personalize books pre-ordered from Malaprop’s. Use the order comments field to tell us to whom a book should be inscribed, e.g. “to Maria.”

Join us for a discussion with Y.A. authors Lora Beth Johnson, Andrea Tang, and Emily Suvada to celebrate the launch of Lora Beth Johnson’s newest book, Devil in the Device!

Lora Beth Johnson delivers a stunning conclusion to the Goddess in the Machine duology with this brilliant novel. Part political conspiracy, part technological thriller, its deeply emotional core deftly explores what it means to be human, and how to hold on when everything seems lost.

As an only child, Lora Beth Johnson grew up telling herself stories and reading past her bedtime. She spent her adulthood collecting degrees, careers, and stamps in her passport before realizing her passion for creating fictional worlds. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching college English and learning new languages. She lives in Davidson, North Carolina, with her little roommate, Colocataire the Yorki-poo. She is also the author of Goddess in the Machine. Find Lora Beth on Twitter @LoraBethWrites.

Andrea Tang grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and currently resides in Washington, DC, where she pens fiction by night and collects geopolitical gossip by day. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the University of Oxford, she’s also a perpetually recovering theater kid, Fulbright grantee, former pentathlete, tae kwon do black belt, and serial dabbler in various martial and movement arts. Among other things, she enjoys superheroes, giant robots, and the endless versatility of pie. Andrea is also the author of Rebelwing.

Emily Suvada is the award-winning author of the Mortal Coil trilogy, a science fiction thriller series for young adults. She was born and raised in Australia, where she went on to earn a degree in mathematics. She previously worked as a data scientist, and still spends hours writing algorithms to perform tasks which would only take her minutes to complete on her own. When not writing, she can be found hiking, cycling, and conducting chemistry experiments in her kitchen. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband.

Like most of our events, this event is free, but registration is required. Click here to RSVP for this event. Prior to the event the link required to attend will be emailed to registrants.

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!

Bears aren’t the only predators in these woods. Best friends Neena and Josie spent high school as outsiders, but at least they had each other. Now, with college and a two-thousand-mile separation looming on the horizon, they have one last chance to be together–a three-day hike deep into the woods of the Pisgah National Forest. Simmering tensions lead to a detour off the trail and straight into a waking nightmare … and then into something far worse. Something that will test them in horrifying ways.

STEPHANIE PERKINS is the New York Times bestselling author and anthology editor of multiple books, including There’s Someone Inside Your House, Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door, and Isla and the Happily Ever After. She has always worked with books–first as a bookseller, then as a librarian, and now as a novelist. Stephanie lives in the mountains of North Carolina with her husband. Every room of their house is painted a different color of the rainbow.

Like most of our events, this event is free, but registration is required. Click here to RSVP for this event. Prior to the event the link required to attend will be emailed to registrants.

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!

Soon after his 50th birthday, Petrow began assembling a list of “things I won’t do when I get old”–mostly a catalog of all the things he thought his then 70-something year old parents were doing wrong. That list, which included “You won’t have to shout at me that I’m deaf,” and “I won’t blame the family dog for my incontinence,” became the basis of this rousing collection of do’s and don’ts, wills and won’ts that is equal parts hilarious, honest, and practical.

The fact is, we don’t want to age the way previous generations did. “Old people” hoard. They bore relatives–and strangers alike–with tales of their aches and pains. They insist on driving long after they’ve become a danger to others (and themselves). They eat dinner at 4pm. They swear they don’t need a cane or walker (and guess what happens next). They never, ever apologize. But there is another way…

In Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old, Petrow candidly addresses the fears, frustrations, and stereotypes that accompany aging. He offers a blueprint for the new old age, and an understanding that aging and illness are not the same. As he writes, “I meant the list to serve as a pointed reminder–to me–to make different choices when I eventually cross the threshold to ‘old.'”

Getting older is a privilege. This essential guide reveals how to do it with grace, wisdom, humor, and hope. And without hoarding.

Steven Petrow is an award-winning journalist and author best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on aging, health, and civility. He’s currently an opinion columnist covering manners and civil discourse for USA Today, and his 2019 TED Talk, “3 Ways to Practice Civility” has been viewed nearly two million times and translated into 16 languages. Formerly the host and executive producer of The Civilist, a podcast from Public Radio International and North Carolina Public Radio WUNC, Steven regularly appears on television and radio. He’s the author of six books, including Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners and Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old. A former president of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, Steven is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the National Press Foundation. In 2017, he became the named sponsor of the Steven Petrow LGBTQ Fellowship at the VCCA, a prize that is awarded annually. Steven lives in Hillsborough, N.C. with his cocker spaniel, Binx Bolling. Please visit him online at StevenPetrow.com.

Jill McCorkle‘s first two novels were released simultaneously when she was just out of college, and the New York Times called her “a born novelist.” Since then, she has published six novels and four collections of short stories, and her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories several times, as well as The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Five of her books have been New York Times Notable books, and her most recent novel, Life After Life, was a New York Times bestseller. She has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, the Atlantic, and other publications. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard, where she also chaired the department of creative writing. She is currently a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is affiliated with the MFA program at North Carolina State University.