Calendar of Events

Literacy Together (formerly Literacy Council of Buncombe County) hosts two monthly orientation meetings. Everyone is welcome to join us, from community members willing to learn more about Literacy Together’s work to prospective volunteer tutors.

We have a determined group of students waiting for volunteer tutors so they can move forward on their goals for a better future. Tutor training is via distance learning, and all tutoring sessions are online. We have programs teaching English to immigrants, adult literacy for folks working on a GED, and youth literacy for kids struggling to learn to read.

Literacy Together (formerly Literacy Council of Buncombe County) hosts two monthly orientation meetings. Everyone is welcome to join us, from community members willing to learn more about Literacy Together’s work to prospective volunteer tutors.

We have a determined group of students waiting for volunteer tutors so they can move forward on their goals for a better future. Tutor training is via distance learning, and all tutoring sessions are online. We have programs teaching English to immigrants, adult literacy for folks working on a GED, and youth literacy for kids struggling to learn to read.

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’re putting our build crew back together and we’d love to have you join us. Every 2 weeks, we’ll meet at 9 am for hands-on set construction! Whether your talents are building, painting, or you just want to learn, come out and join us every other Saturday for some creative fun. Tools and work gloves are helpful but not required

Join us for monthly workdays in the Hardesty Lane native tree nursery. Tasks vary and often include weeding, mulching, mowing, weed eating, fertilizing, labeling, watering, etc.

Minimum Age: 13+

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.

Volunteers will help remove Canada Blackberry (Rubus canadensis) and other woody vegetation from Round Bald to help maintain globally rare, grassy habitat. This is a great chance to learn about what SAHC does to manage these rare habitats, without the commitment of a long hike in. In general, we will be working within less than a 0.5 mile from the parking area. We encourage anyone who is new to conservation or to the Roan to join us for this event.

Volunteer with United Way to Stuff Backpacks for School Supply Drive I’m excited to share with you today an Alexis de Tocqueville Society volunteer event that is just around the corner! We know that all too many students arrive on the first day of a new school year with the desire to learn but without all the necessary school supplies needed. UWABC is coordinating with local nonprofits, who directly work with Buncombe County students, to gauge the need of our students. We aim to provide 2,350 backpacks to grade school children across Buncombe County, and we need the Tocqueville Society’s help in stuffing backpacks. Come on out and volunteer with fellow Alexis de Tocqueville Society members on August 1st!

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’re putting our build crew back together and we’d love to have you join us. Every 2 weeks, we’ll meet at 9 am for hands-on set construction! Whether your talents are building, painting, or you just want to learn, come out and join us every other Saturday for some creative fun. Tools and work gloves are helpful but not required

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/.

We need inspired, compassionate Ambassadors. You can help to spread the word and speak truth to power. You can help us grow the movement to protect Southern forests and communities from destructive industrial logging.

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Literacy Together (formerly Literacy Council of Buncombe County) hosts two monthly orientation meetings. Everyone is welcome to join us, from community members willing to learn more about Literacy Together’s work to prospective volunteer tutors.

We have a determined group of students waiting for volunteer tutors so they can move forward on their goals for a better future. Tutor training is via distance learning, and all tutoring sessions are online. We have programs teaching English to immigrants, adult literacy for folks working on a GED, and youth literacy for kids struggling to learn to read.

Literacy Together (formerly Literacy Council of Buncombe County) hosts two monthly orientation meetings. Everyone is welcome to join us, from community members willing to learn more about Literacy Together’s work to prospective volunteer tutors.

We have a determined group of students waiting for volunteer tutors so they can move forward on their goals for a better future. Tutor training is via distance learning, and all tutoring sessions are online. We have programs teaching English to immigrants, adult literacy for folks working on a GED, and youth literacy for kids struggling to learn to read.

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.