The next installment of the monthly Writers at Home series, featuring writers from the Prose Master Class taught by Elizabeth Lutyens at UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program, takes place at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 16, at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood St., in downtown Asheville. This event is free and open to everyone.

For more information about UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program, visit the program’s website.

We’ll take a deep dive into ecologically-based preventive, cultural, and integrated practices to reduce the impact of the disease on your farm in this one-day workshop. You will gain a thorough understanding of what causes disease, identification techniques, and best management practices for reducing the damage that crop disease can cause.

In this one day workshop, you will gain an ecological understanding of pests including their biology, how to sample for pest and beneficial insects, and their relationship to soil and nutrient management. You will also learn management strategies that are commonly used to prevent pest damage, promote beneficials, and be equipped to develop a plan to manage pest outbreaks effectively on your farm.

The conference focuses on the business side of farming, offering beginning and established farmers financial, legal, management, and marketing tools to improve their farm businesses and make new professional connections.

The conference offers over a dozen workshops led by farmers and regional professionals, including Achieve Your Farm Financial Goals, Developing Your Farm Brand, Selling to Restaurants, and more. The popular Grower-Buyer Meeting gives farmers the chance to meet with buyers from area restaurants, groceries, and distributors. Farmers can receive individual support on legal, tax, labor, recordkeeping, and marketing issues during the extended lunch. Breakfast and lunch featuring local farm products is provided.

For the second year, the conference will include a free summit and leadership training for farmers market managers as well as a new farmers market fundraising forum. With more than 100 independent markets across the region, farmers markets are an important outlet for farmers to sell their products, build their customer base, and strengthen community ties. Interested market managers should contact Mike McCreary, [email protected], to pre-register for the summit.

Registration for the Business of Farming Conference is now open at asapconnections.org or by contacting ASAP at (828) 236-1282. Attendance is $75 per person by Feb. 1 and $95 beginning Feb. 2, with a discount for farm partners registering together. Sponsors for the Business of Farming Conference include Ingles Markets, Farm Burger, and Biltmore. Additional support comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Buncombe County Strategic Partnership, Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, and the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission.

Bring your little one to Book Warehouse at the Asheville Outlets (ShopAshevilleOutlets.com) in their favorite Frozen character costume for a Frozen 2 Storytime and Dress Up on Saturday, February 22nd from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Kids will enjoy a reading of Frozen 2, coloring activity, snacks, and a Frozen Scavenger Hunt complete with prizes! Taking place inside Book Warehouse, Suite 124.

Bullington staff Kelsey Jarvis and John Murphy will discuss trees, shrubs and hardy perennials that will draw birds to your garden year-round with examples of nesting preferences and food sources for specific birds. In partnership with Wild Birds Unlimited Hendersonville.

Healthy Beginnings – February 28 at noon to 2:30. AdventHealth and WNC Farmers Market are teaming up to promote healthy habits. Blood pressure and body mass index screenings will be available and AdventHealth dieticians will prepare samples of healthy recipes using WNC Farmers Market ingredients.

Books for kids 0-18! Priced to sell! Most for $1 or less!
Proceeds provide books for young children through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

Malaprop’s is pleased to partner with The Great Smokies Writing Program and Departments of History and English at UNC Asheville to bring #1 New York Times bestselling author Erik Larson back to Asheville!

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City delivers a startlingly fresh portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz.

In THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people the art of being fearless. It is a story of political brinksmanship but also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchills prime-ministerial country house, Chequers, and his wartime residence, Ditchley, where Churchill and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, including recently declassified files, intelligence reports, and personal diaries only now available, Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their daughters, Sarah, Diana, and the youngest, Mary, who chafes against her parents wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; her illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisors who comprised Churchills Secret Circle, including his dangerously observant private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Federick Lindemann.

THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership when in the face of unrelenting horror Churchills eloquence, strategic brilliance, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

ABOUT ERIK LARSON
Erik Larson is the author of seven books, five of which became New York Times bestsellers. His latest Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, hit #1 on the list soon after launch. His saga of the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893, The Devil in the White City, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing; it lingered on various Times bestseller lists for the better part of a decade. Hulu plans to adapt the book for a limited TV series, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese as executive producers. Eriks In the Garden of Beasts, about how America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany and his daughter experienced the rising terror of Hitler’s rule, has been optioned by Tom Hanks for development as a feature film. Learn more at https://eriklarsonbooks.com/

Books for kids 0-18! Priced to sell! Most for $1 or less!
Proceeds provide books for young children through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library