Writers at Home Series

The Writers at Home Series takes place at Malaprop's Bookstore and Café, 55 Haywood St. Asheville, NC.  Free and open to the public.

Spring 2012 Schedule

Writers at Home Spring Series Concludes with Readings from "The Great Smokies Review," Sunday, May 20, 3pm.

The Writers at Home spring series concludes with readings by contributors to recent issues of "The Great Smokies Review," the online literary magazine published by UNC Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program. This event is free and open to the public and begins at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 20, at Malaprop's Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood St., Asheville.

Pete Solet and Pam Ruatto will read short stories set in New York City and Shishmaref, Alaska. Bon Parker will read an excerpt from her memoir featuring her weekend at Woodstock in 1969. UNC Asheville senior Caitlin Donovan will read from a piece that has just won the university's Wilma Dykeman nonfiction award. Jerry Willis, Nina Hart, and Jean Cassidy will read their poetry, and Mark Prudowsky will discuss the serendipity of being both a poet and an electrician. Current and past issues of "The Great Smokies Review" are available online via this link.

The Writers at Home Series is sponsored by UNC Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program. After this final Writers at Home event of the spring, the series will resume in the fall with 3 p.m. readings the third Sunday of each month at Malaprop's. For more information, visit the program website or call 828/.250.2353.

Sunday, April 15, 3pm: Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park

History, poetry, and children’s literature inspired by the Great Smoky Mountains will be featured in “Books to Take Backpacking,” presented by the Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Historian Margaret Brown, poet Thomas Rain Crowe, and children’s author Ann Clayton will read from their works at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 15, at Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café, 55 Haywood St in downtown Asheville. This “Writers at Home” event will encourage and inspire stewardship of the Great Smoky Mountains, and is free and open to the public.

Brown, an assistant professor of history at Brevard College, will read from “The Wild East: ABiography of the Great Smoky Mountains.” Widely considered the authoritative text on the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP), the book explores the social, political, and environmental changes in the Great Smoky Mountains from the time of the Cherokee to the creation of the National Park. Brown also co-authored “Historic Buildings of the Smokies” and “Hiking Trails of the Smokies.”

Crowe is an internationally-published poet and the author of thirty books of original and translated works, including his award winning memoir, “Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods,” and his most recent book of essays and articles, “The End of Eden: Writings of an Environmental Activist.” Crowe will read from his work appearing in “Every Breath Sings Mountains,” a series chapbook focusing on the Great Smoky Mountains published by Voices From the American Land in 2011.

Clayton is a volunteer with GSMNP Elk Bugle Corps in Cataloochee Valley, where she“talks elk” with Park visitors. Clayton will read from her children’s book, “Bully for You, Elk 22,” based on the story of a Cataloochee elk. She is also the author of “Good Morning Goldfish,” a story written for professionals working with children with behavioral disorders, inspired by her career in education advocating for children. She has had articles and photographs published in Adventures in the Smokies, Carolina Country, and Smoky Mountain Living.

Sunday, March 18, 3pm: UNC Asheville Undergraduate Writing Scholarship Winners

UNC Asheville's undergraduate writing scholarship winners will present their works in the next installment of UNC Asheville's Writers at Home series. Authors include Ryan-Ashley Anderson, Lily Latini, Matthew Owens, Mary Ellen Phillips, and Chett Tiller. The reading begins at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 18, at Malaprop's Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood St., downtown Asheville. It is free and open to the public.

Ryan-Ashley Anderson, winner of the Carl Sandburg Prize in Poetry, is a senior in the Creative Writing program. She writes confessional poetry and creative nonfiction, exploring generational patterns, legacy, and family history.

Lily Latini, a senior and winner of the Topp/Grillot Poetry Scholarship, writes poetry that deals personally with family, gender, and sexuality.

Matthew Owens, winner of the Comfort Award in Creative Writing, was born in Memphis and now lives in Asheville where he co-hosts Juniper Bends, a quarterly reading series. He has published in various journals including Pig, Headwaters, Hobart and decomP. He is the also the recipient of the Oculus Award and the Thomas Wolfe Award.

Mary Ellen Phillips, winner of the Topp/Grillot Poetry Scholarship is an Interdisciplinary Studies major studying Poetry of Personal Transformation through creative writing, ethnography, psychology, and wellness studies. She is a recipient of the Appalachian College Association-UNC Asheville Grant for Undergraduate Research titled The Poetics of Community, through which she has been teaching poetry to a small group of stay-at-home mothers focusing on the poetry of everyday life.

The Writers at Home series is sponsored by UNC Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program. For more information about the program call 828.250.2353.

Sunday, February 19 at 3pm: Three from UNC Asheville’s Master of Liberal Arts Program

Three writers from UNC Asheville’s Master of Liberal Arts program will be featured in February’s installment of the “Writers at Home” series, sponsored by UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing program. Award-winning screenwriter Maryedith Burrell, Ann Barrett, and Jessica Pepper will read from their current works at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, at Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café, 55 Haywood St. in downtown Asheville. It is free and open to the public.

Burrell has written for studios and networks such as Disney and NBC, starred in the TV series, “Parenthood,” and had recurring roles on “Seinfeld” and “Home Improvement.” She is currently teaching a screenwriting course in the Great Smokies Writing Program.

Barrett, a recent graduate of the Master of Liberal Arts program, was a hairdresser before becoming an essayist and poet. "To be a successful hairstylist," said Barrett, "one must give a wicked shampoo. To be a successful writer, one must write.”

Pepper, a current Master of Liberal Arts student, only recently decided to share her creative writing in public. She loves to tell a good story and make people laugh.

For more information about the Writers at Home series and the Great Smokies Writing Program, call the program at 828/250-2353.

Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 3pm: Prose Master Class

Published writers from diverse professional backgrounds will read their works in the next installment of “Writers at Home,” the monthly series from UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program. The writers are all part of the program’s invitation-only prose master class. Elizabeth Lutyens, who teaches the master class, will host the reading, beginning at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, at Malaprop's Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood St., downtown Asheville. It is free and open to the public.

The professional backgrounds of the authors inform the short stories and novel excerpts that will be presented. Among those reading will be a lawyer, a potter, a computer executive, a religious studies scholar, and a chemical engineer who contributed to the panel of scientists awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change. The readers are Lenny Bernstein, Bob Brooks, Marie Hefley, Terry Gess, Judi Goldenberg, Jennifer McLean, Beth Robrecht and Justin Watson.

For more information about the Writers at Home series and the Great Smokies Writing Program, call 828.250.2353.

Previous readers, Fall 2011:

Sunday, November 20, 2011 at 3pm
Marjorie Hudson & Kevin McIlvoy

Marjorie Hudson grew up in Washington, D.C., and now lives in Chatham County, NC. Accidental Birds of the Carolinas, a Novello Literary Award Finalist, is her first book of fiction. Hudson’s fiction, poetry, and personal essays have been collected in five anthologies, and her work has been published in magazines and journals, including Story, Storytelling Magazine, Garden & Gun, Yankee, West Branch, National Parks, American Land Forum, and North Carolina Literary Review. Honors and awards include a Fiction Syndicate Prize, two Pushcart Special Mentions, Writer in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts and Hedgebrook Retreat for Women Writers, a Blumenthal Award, and Sarah Belk Gambrell Artist Educator of the Year. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College.

Kevin McIlvoy offers online instruction and book editing through his website, www.mcthebookmechanic.com. He teaches in the Asheville community, where he is also an adjunct faculty member for the Warren Wilson MFA Program in Creative Writing. For twenty-seven years he taught as Regents Professor of Creative Writing at New Mexico State University where he also served as editor-in-chief and fiction editor of the national literary magazine, Puerto del Sol. He has published four novels, A Waltz, The Fifth Station, Little Peg, and Hyssop. His most recent book is a short story collection, The Complete History of New Mexico (Graywolf Press). He is at work on a new story collection, 57 Octaves Below Middle C.

Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 3pm
Susan Lefler and Jennifer McGaha

 Susan Lefler’s poems have appeared in journals including Icarus International, Appalachian Heritage, Pinesong, Asheville Poetry Review, Wind, Passager, Main St. Rag, Pembroke Review, Pisgah Review, and Kakalak. A short story was published in Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, 2010 and a poem in Women’s Places, 2011. She is the author of Brevard, a photographic history published by Arcadia in 2004 and was formerly managing editor of Smoky Mountain Living. Her first collection of poems Rendering the Bones was published Wind Publications in the spring of 2011.

Jennifer McGaha, a native of Western North Carolina, writes nonfiction and literary nonfiction with an edge. Sometimes humorous and sometimes quirky but always informed by her southern Appalachian upbringing, Jennifer's work has appeared or is pending publication in Blue Mesa, Lumina, The Portland Review, Compass Rose, Slow Trains, North Carolina Literary Review, New Southerner, Wilderness House Literary Review,, Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, BackHome Magazine, and many other regional and national publications. Her essay "Leanin' Back" received runner-up in the 2009 New Southerner nonfiction contest and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Jennifer also teaches part-time at Brevard College, where she serves as nonfiction editor for the Pisgah Review.

Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 3pm
Students from Pat Riviere-Seel’s Fall 2010 Great Smokies Poetry Workshop

Joy Boothe lives in Yancey County and had work appear in The Great Smokies Review and Fresh Magazine. Her story, “Fifty Cents,” was a finalist in a GlimmerTrain competition. Recently she had a story published in Headwaters Creative Arts Journal.

Anne Maren-Hogan gardens and writes in the South Toe Valley beneath Mt. Mitchell.

Susan Larson returned to Spruce Pine after a 15-year career as a fundraiser at UNC Greensboro. Prior to that, she was instrumental in starting and shaping the Toe River Arts Council, which serves Mitchell and Yancey counties.

Bethany Rountree is a writer and stay-at-home mom, living with her husband and their three teenagers in the South Toe River Valley of the Black Mountains.

Teleia H. Tollison is a proud Navy wife and mother. She was educated here and there across the South. Her formative years were in Appalachia, and then she returned home with her husband when he retired. She has been a closet writer all her life.