This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited number of seats are available to attend the event in-store. 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.
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A young maid at an upscale resort hides her banjo-playing freight hopper brother. An unlikely romance bridges a quarter-century age gap and a 150-year-old murder. A man tries to turn his sheltered mother’s backyard shed into a pricey vacation rental. A gig worker must shake off her darker identity to become a professional baby namer. This mesmeric debut collection of stories set in the Appalachian mountains weaves together the curious and the sublime, with Bianchi’s lyrical style cutting straight to the heart of the matter.
Melanie McGee Bianchi grew up in a series of character-forming historic houses in different parts of the U.S. Starting at age 12, she gathered modest notice on the spelling-bee circuit, won short-story contests in various newspapers, and placed poems and fiction in national print publications, including the grunge-era teen magazine Sassy. After university, she began a career in features journalism in Asheville, North Carolina, where she has lived most of her life. Melanie was the lead arts reporter and Arts & Entertainment Editor at Mountain Xpress, a member paper of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, for ten years. She interviewed celebrities of many genres, including Loretta Lynn, David Sedaris, Aimee Mann, the late R.L. Burnside, and the late Doc Watson. In 2004, she won an industry Gold Award for special-section editing.After five happy years as a stay-at-home mom, Melanie next edited VERVE, a women’s magazine, for a period in the 2010s, working with Venezuelan fashion photographer Zaire Kacz and model/stylist Sara Fields Bridges. Melanie currently manages three regional lifestyle publications: Asheville Made, Bold Life, and Carolina Home + Garden. Her humor essays have been published regionally and nationally, and her poetry has been shortlisted in national chapbook contests and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Melanie’s current fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review’s Summer Prize Issue, in Chattahoochee Review, and in The Moth Magazine (based in Co. Cavan, Ireland). These pieces and more are included in her first book, The Ballad of Cherrystoke + Other Stories, forthcoming from Blackwater Press in 2022.
Alli Marshall is a poet, performer, writer, editor, film maker and creative community builder. She’s interested in moving writing beyond the page, seeking the golden in the mundane, finding the intersection of art and social justice, and reconnecting with mythology — both ancient and modern.