Buncombe County Public Libraries will be opening three additional locations for curbside pickup service, the Fairview, Leicester, and Oakley/South Asheville branches. These locations will operate from 1-5 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, in addition to our current curbside pickup service locations at the Black Mountain, North Asheville, South Buncombe, and West Asheville locations. For more information about library curbside pickup service or to place an item on hold for pickup, please call your local library or the Ask-A-Librarian line (828-250-4700) or visit buncombecounty.org/library. We hope to see you soon!

Experience an immersive dance performance from the comfort of your car at the Asheville Outlets. Drive-In passes are sold per car and include a parking space to enjoy the performance from inside your vehicle. Wearing of face-masks is required at any Wortham Center performance and event. All guests will be required to wear masks except when in personal vehicle.

Stewart/Owen Dance: What Remains

Vanessa Owen and Gavin Stewart are the co-founders of the WNC based Stewart/Owen Dance, where they co-produce original dance, film and music. Their careers span many genres of concert dance, and most notably took them across the globe on fifteen U.S. State Department tours to teach, perform and choreograph contemporary dance with Washington DC-based Company E. Their work abroad influences them to share dance as a universal language that can connect people across different cultures and beliefs and they use this as a driving force in their collaborations. They won the Audience Choice Award at the Dance Gallery Festival 2018 in New York City and were commissioned to create new work as Level UP Artists for Dance Gallery 2019. Vanessa and Gavin are recipients of a McDowell Regional Artist Grant and were voted “Artists Who Most Pushed the Boundaries with the Human Body” by Asheville Fringe Arts Festiva

Buncombe County Public Libraries will be opening three additional locations for curbside pickup service, the Fairview, Leicester, and Oakley/South Asheville branches. These locations will operate from 1-5 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, in addition to our current curbside pickup service locations at the Black Mountain, North Asheville, South Buncombe, and West Asheville locations. For more information about library curbside pickup service or to place an item on hold for pickup, please call your local library or the Ask-A-Librarian line (828-250-4700) or visit buncombecounty.org/library. We hope to see you soon!

We’re thrilled to host the virtual launch for Ron Rash’s new story collection! This event is free but registration is required. Please click here to register. On the day of the event, registrants will receive the link required to attend. Pre-order In the Valley below to receive a bookplate signed by Ron Rash.

From bestselling and award-winning writer Ron Rash comes a collection of ten searing stories and the return of the villainess who propelled Serena to national acclaim, in a long-awaited novella.

In these ten stories, Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in–rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain–and yet within this world he illuminates acts of extraordinary decency and heroism. Two of the stories have already been singled out for accolades: “Baptism” was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2018, and “Neighbors” was selected by Jonathan Lethem for The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child that threatens all she has accomplished. “A gorgeous, brutal writer” (Richard Price) working at the height of his powers, Ron Rash has created another mesmerizing look at the imperfect world around us.

RON RASH is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a New York Times bestseller, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize and winner of the 2019 Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature, he is the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University and lives in Clemson, SC.

Like most of our events, this online event is free. If you decide to attend and to purchase the author’s book(s), we ask that you purchase from Malalprop’s. When you do this you are supporting our work, keeping more dollars in our community, and telling publishers they should continue sending your favorite authors to Malaprop’s. Thank you!

Karen Salyer McElmurray won an AWP Award for creative nonfiction for her book Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey and the Orison Award for creative nonfiction for her essay “Blue Glass.” She has had other essays recognized as “Notable Essays” in Best American Essays, while her essay “Speaking Freely” was nominated for a Pushcart Award. She currently teaches at Gettysburg College and at West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA. She will be in conversation with Abigail DeWitt, author of News of Our Loved Ones. 

Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and to purchase the author’s book(s), we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you are supporting our work and keeping more dollars in our community. Thank you!

Buncombe County Public Libraries will be opening three additional locations for curbside pickup service, the Fairview, Leicester, and Oakley/South Asheville branches. These locations will operate from 1-5 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, in addition to our current curbside pickup service locations at the Black Mountain, North Asheville, South Buncombe, and West Asheville locations. For more information about library curbside pickup service or to place an item on hold for pickup, please call your local library or the Ask-A-Librarian line (828-250-4700) or visit buncombecounty.org/library. We hope to see you soon!

Odie Lindsey is the author of Some Go Home and We Come to Our Senses: Stories. He received an NEA fellowship for combat veterans, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from the University of Mississippi, and is writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He will be in conversation with Chanelle Benz, author of The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead. 

Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and to purchase the author’s book(s), we ask that you purchase from Malalprop’s. When you do this you are supporting our work and keeping more dollars in our community. Thank you!

Buncombe County Public Libraries will be opening three additional locations for curbside pickup service, the Fairview, Leicester, and Oakley/South Asheville branches. These locations will operate from 1-5 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, in addition to our current curbside pickup service locations at the Black Mountain, North Asheville, South Buncombe, and West Asheville locations. For more information about library curbside pickup service or to place an item on hold for pickup, please call your local library or the Ask-A-Librarian line (828-250-4700) or visit buncombecounty.org/library. We hope to see you soon!

The Street Dances have been a tradition for over 100 years in Downtown Hendersonville! They began in 1918, at the end of World War I, when the city welcomed home its soldiers from the War by celebrating in the streets, and became nationally known after they were included in the guidebook Blue Ridge Music Trails, Finding A Place In The Circle, written by Fred S. Fussell. The guidebook was winner of the first PRESERVE AMERICA Presidential Award for Heritage Tourism.

The sounds of fiddles and banjos playing at the Street Dances have been a part of Henderson County’s heritage for more than 100 years, calling people of all ages put on their dancing shoes and journey to downtown Hendersonville to enjoy toe-tapping-good mountain music and dance right in front of the main stage. The dances are held every other Monday evening July 27, August 10, 24 & September 14 at the Visitor Center, located at 201 South Main Street.

Hendersonville comes alive with people square dancing and clogging to the traditional mountain and bluegrass music performed by a live band. Plus, special appearances are often made by area clogging teams, make the Street Dances an even more entertaining, foot stomping evening.

Lively instructions are given to the dancers by a local caller. At 6:30pm, our caller, Walt Puckett, will teach audience members some basic square dancing moves used in traditional Appalachian square dancing, such as the Right Hand Across, Open the Garden Gate and the Shoe Fly Swing.

Bring a chair, and sit back, relax and enjoy mountain heritage music and dancing from 7:00-9:00pm. The seating area opens at 5:30pm, and early admission is prohibited. Admission is free. No alcoholic beverages, backpacks or coolers allowed. 

Please leave your pets comfortably at home. A Hendersonville City ordinance allows event organizers to exclude animals from the event space for the health, safety and welfare of the community, dogs, patrons, and vendors and their products.

In case of inclement weather the dance will be postponed until 8:00pm, and if the weather does not cooperate by 8:00pm, the performance will be cancelled.

For additional information call the Henderson County Tourism Development Authority at 828-693-9708. The Street Dances are coordinated, produced, and sponsored by Henderson County Tourism Development Authority