Calendar of Events

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Join us July 20th for an introduction to Next.js.

What is Next.js? Let’s ask nextjs.org:

Used by some of the world’s largest companies, Next.js enables you to create full-stack web applications by extending the latest React features, and integrating powerful Rust-based JavaScript tooling for the fastest builds.

In this session, you will learn the pros and cons of using Next.js along with examples of what you can accomplish using the framework. We will give an overview of how a Next.js application is structured, demonstrate a production Next.js website, and build a Next.js website from a starter template.

Big thanks to the Biltmore HR Department who graciously gifted us use of their well-equipped training space. Biltmore Career Center is centrally located with tons of parking, ample snacks/beverages, and reliable Wi-Fi.

As you may know, Asheville JavaScript Meetup has been dormant since January 2020 and recently changed leadership. This session, if successful, will likely lead to more events. The JS world is too exciting to sit by idly – let’s have some fun! 🎉

Your hosts are Jennifer Hill, Front-End Web Developer, and Chad Evans, Web Enthusiast.

Note that Asheville JavaScript Meetup is an independent meetup group. Future events may be held at a different location with different sponsors.

GIVEAWAY: Two (2) Biltmore tickets will be awarded to two (2) lucky attendees – only if you RSVP and are present for the session. Please RSVP if you plan to attend.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

We are excited to share that XP League Asheville will have Open House activities on 7/29 from 10-2pm where you can book a free coaching session. All early registrations will receive a Founding Member discount – for life!
Team games we play include Fortnite, Minecraft (bed-wars), Rocket League, Valorant, Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, and League of Legends.
The founders of this NC based franchise created a league where kids ages 7-17 could join a team and enjoy high-level league play against other youth teams across the country, all while enjoying a safe environment, PCA certified coach-led sessions, and receive training on how to play with a positive mindset.
Please scroll to the calendar on this website to book the free coaching session that you want to attend:
https://asheville.xpl.gg/home

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Online or in-print, you can’t avoid all the hype around the new AIs like ChatGPT. They are going to take over the world! But first they are going to replace lawyers, doctors, accountants, marketing departments, script writers… and on…

Or maybe… they are yet another tool that will help – in powerful ways – but not replace any of those groups or replace you. In fact, they are already helping in many fields and have been before all the press coverage started. But they are also getting people into trouble. And they can get you into trouble, or hurt your business results, if you don’t understand their limits and uses.

In this class you will learn how Large Language Models (like ChatGPT) work (and how they don’t). You will learn how they can get people into trouble so you will have a better chance to avoid that. And you will learn a few, basic, ways they can be used, after all, to help you with your small business.

If you can, please bring a laptop or tablet so you can setup a free ChatGPT account (if you don’t have one) and can tailor some of the class examples to your own business interests. However, a computer is not required to benefit from the class – we will be running examples and results on the projector screen as well.

This is not a technical class. We will not get into APIs and will only talk about the model parameters as part of showing, in a non-technical way, how the models work. We will also not debate whether they will replace all those professional groups “in a few years” because a) they won’t because they can’t by their very nature and b) we’re going to spend the class time talking about how small business owners can safely and productively use the tools today.

Instructor: Michael Truffa

Michael Truffa has been involved in a range of technology roles starting in the 1970s continuing on to today – doing application scripting, web & back-end programming, data science, error analytics, team management, and more. He also has a wide range of non-computer experience including roles in direct & b2b sales, as a mechanical & electrical technician in the oilfield, retail, and more that help inform his pragmatic view of how computers can, and sometimes can’t, help people do real-world jobs.

Join us for our monthly poetry reading series coordinated by Mildred Barya. This month, we welcome Jenny Bates, David Dixon, Kathy Cantley Ackerman, and Thomas Alan Holmes

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 featured books will be available for purchase at the event. This event also includes a book signing.

If you would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, you may order a signed copy online below. To order Kathy Cantley Ackerman’s Repeat After Me, please call the store at (828) 254-6734.

If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to provide a name for personalization, e.g. “To Paul.” NOTE: We do our best to get books personalized when requested but personalization is not guaranteed.

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!

Jenny Bates is a member of Winston-Salem Writers, NC Poetry Society, and NC Writers Network. Where the Deer Sleep is Bates’ third book with Hermit Feathers Press following Slip (2020) and Visitations (2019). She’s published in numerous journals including Pinesong, Flying South, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and Old Mountain Press. Born and raised in Michigan, she now resides in the foothills of North Carolina.

Where the Deer Sleep is an inspiring call to reverence and wonder. To a place where “directions are not geographical.” To a time life can “go back to being a good dog.” To the church of cats and crows, stars and thunder, patience and grace – where the ordinary is divine. And miracle. I believe Jenny when she tells us she sits with toads – and listens. These poems make no pretense of being the High-Priestess of anything. Instead, they stand quietly by the entrance, bulletin in hand – inviting us in. You will be glad you did.

—

David Dixon is a physician, poet, and musician who lives and practices in Mount Airy. He is the medical director of Surry Medical Ministries, a free clinic in the area. He has played in several regional bands and remains active in local music. His written work has appeared in Rock & Sling, The Northern Virginia Review, Connecticut River Review, FlyingSouth, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Scattering of Saints (Hermit Feathers Press, 2022).

David Dixon whirls readers through languages of faith, illness, love, loss; lives of apostles, pets, poets, and trees. These poems are a search for what remains and what illuminates when all the lights go out and we’re left to find our way home in the dark, hoping there is a home. Dixon troubles us with all the pesky questions: how to die? how to live? How to bind? Every poem a sign. Each line a constellation.

—

Kathy Cantley Ackerman was born in coal country West Virginia, grew up in Ohio, and has lived in the Carolinas nearly 40 years.  She has published three poetry chapbooks and three full-length collections, most recently Repeat after Me. Her 2019 collection, A Quarrel of Atoms, received the Lena Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. Ackerman serves as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Isothermal Community College in Spindale and lives on a loblolly farm in Polk County.

How hard it is to keep what lives alive. Kathy Ackerman brings it all to life: love, loss and the fear of loss, revelations about what’s become essential and what no longer is. These poems are ordinary days like the ones we all must hack a path through, but when we look back and consider the way we’ve come an unexpected clarity fills us. Everything ordinary is extraordinary. Repeat after me: so it is with love that lasts, tender and perennial / tender and vulnerable.

—

Thomas Alan Holmes, a member of the East Tennessee State University faculty, teaches American literature with specialties in Appalachian and Black American literature. His creative and scholarly work has appeared in such journals as Valparaiso Poetry Review, Appalachian Journal, The North American Review, and Still: The Journal. Iris Press published In the Backhoe’s Shadow, Holmes’ first poetry collection, in 2022.

In the Backhoe’s Shadow celebrates the bonds of family in a time of rapid change. The poems display extraordinarily precise, photographic details of work and memory, childhood games and pets, sad country songs. Some are poems of dailiness and humor, and the legacy of a certain time and place. Holmes is a gifted storyteller of the struggle with contemporary uncertainties, of deep kinship, of love.

—

Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer and poet. She has written short-stories and essays for various publications, features and travel articles for newspapers. Her first collection of poetry titled: Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say won the National Award for poetry publication 2002. She is also the author of the poetry collections The Price of Memory and Give Me Room to Move My Feet. Barya is Assistant professor of Creative Writing and World Literature at University of North Carolina-Asheville. Learn more at http://mildredbarya.com/.

Are you curious or even passionate about using advocacy, technology and sensible design to create more equitable social and civic structures in Western North Carolina?
Whether you call yourself an organizer, a technologist, a designer, planner, concerned resident, all of the above or something else entirely, we want to be in relationship and build community together with you.
Check out a list of our current projects: https://github.com/CodeForAsheville/projects
What to expect:
Since project work takes place asynchronously—individually and in smaller squads—the goals of our monthly gatherings are to:

• build relationships and learn about each other’s skills, interests and goals,
• learn what we are doing across the organization (project updates),
• provide opportunities to get involved with and/or initiate projects, and
• shape where we are going as an organization, co-creating the culture and course of our work together.

In this meeting, we will:

• gather virtually using Zoom for group video chat,
• do brief introductions, with a prompt,
• share updates about the projects that we’re working on, highlighting deliverables for the next month and areas where additional resources would be useful, and
• discuss proposals and new opportunities to engage with local government and community organizations.

It isn’t all glamorous, but the stakes are low for showing up and we’d be delighted to join together with you in this work.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

The last of our 3 Fringe Summer Nights will have pop up performances, Asheville Fringe announcements, cold beverages and weirdo camaraderie. Join us!
Featuring:
Strange Daughters Butoh
The Accidentals
Justin Evans

Donations go to artists. Donate to Asheville Fringe at https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?donation=afs

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Free Technology Workshop Lead by “Rent a Millennial”

Topic: Setting Up Your Home Internet
This class will cover your local area network (the internet in your home). How to set it up, how to optimize it, how to troubleshoot common issues. There will be time for Q&A and individual attention.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

School is out for a teacher’s work day, so bring your child (age 7-17) to our esports day camp from 8am-4pm – bring their own lunch. Only $70 for the day. (18 spots available)

School is out for a teacher’s work day, so bring your child (age 7-17) to our esports day camp from 8am-4pm – bring their own lunch. Only $70 for the day. (18 spots available)

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Do you want to have a date night or just some quiet time at home? Drop off your kids with us anytime between 5-10pm for a fun night of video games and a variety of board games!

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.