This series, explores novels, poetry and historic nonfiction focused on Appalachian experiences and Swannanoa Valley history through discussions and visits from regional authors.
When & Where: Book club events take place once a month on Friday mornings, March thru August. A book club discussion takes place from 10:00-10:30am, followed by a short break. The author then conducts a reading and takes questions from 11:00am to noon.
Cost: Swannanoa Valley Book Club Series events are FREE to the public, but registration is required for all events, and donations are encouraged!
Accessing Books: Some books are available at a discount through local bookstore Sassafras-on-Sutton others can be purchased on Amazon or other online retailers. Scroll down for more details.
2025 Series
March 28th: Where Dark Things Grow, with author Andrew K. Clark
In his debut novel, Where Dark Things Grow, poet Andrew K. Clark blends magical realism, horror, and Appalachian Gothic to create a beautifully rendered and dark tale. Leo is a troubled fifteen-year-old growing up in rural, Depression-era Appalachia with unstable parents, two useless brothers, his sick baby sister, Goldfish, and the memory of his deceased brother, Jacob. When his father goes missing, Leo’s attempts to help his family and find his father bring him into contact with mythical beasts, alchemists, prostitutes, and Jacob’s ghost, who may or may not be an evil spirit.
As Leo navigates his place in the physical world and magical realms around him, he struggles with the legacy of his father and his own dark desires. Will he be able to save those touched by illness, insanity, and greed? Can he shake his own connection to an ancient evil and find a better path? Step into the world of Andrew K. Clark’s Where Dark Things Grow to find out.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew K. Clark’s poetry collection, Jesus in the Trailer, was published by Main Street Rag Press, and his debut novel, Where Dark Things Grow, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press. His work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, UCLA’s Out of Anonymity, Appalachian Review, Rappahannock Review, and The Wrath Bearing Tree. He received his MFA from Converse College. A Western North Carolina native, Clark lives outside Asheville, NC. Connect with him at andrewkclark.com or on social media through Threads, X, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok: @theandrewkclark.
Book can be purchased online at Amazon or other online retailers.
April 25th: Kings of Coweetsee, with author Dale Neal
When local historian Birdie Barker Price finds a stolen ballot box from an old election on her front porch, she opens a Pandora’s Box spilling secrets to Coweetsee County’s troubled history of vote-buying, child brides, drownings, church arson, wrongful arrests and guilty passions.
“Living back of beyond, we don’t consider ourselves a backwards people, but as keepers of a lost kingdom.” Murder ballads, long sung by local women, document the heartbreak that runs through the generations, of women wronged by vengeful men.
The intertwined stories of Birdie and other natives and newcomers to Coweetsee depict a rural community wrestling with a vanishing culture and an uncertain future. A tale set in Appalachia holds resonance for myriad places in contemporary America.
Dale Neal is the author of the upcoming novel Kings of Coweetsee, exploring how change comes to a hill born and hill bound people in a mountain community. His previous novels, Appalachian Book of the Dead,The Half-Life of Home, and Cow Across America, are all set in the storied Blue Ridge Mountains. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Arts & Letters, Carolina Quarterly, Marlboro Review, Crescent Review and many other literary journals.
A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, he has been awarded fellowships to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hambidge Center and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland. One of the last surviving American journalists, he was a prize-winning writer for the Asheville Citizen-Times, having covered entrepreneurs, police, local government, religion, arts, books and Cherokee culture. He currently teaches fiction at the Lenoir-Rhyne University Graduate Center in Asheville.
A lifelong native of North Carolina, he makes his home in Thomas Wolfe’s old hometown of Asheville with his wife and dogs. When his nose is not buried in some book, he’s bound to be out on the trails of the surrounding Blue Ridge mountains.
Book can be purchased at Sassafras on Sutton for a 20% discount, or online.
May 30th: All We Have Loved, with author Julia Nunnally Duncan
All We Have Loved offers an intimate glimpse into a woman’s life spent in Western North Carolina. Expressing a reverence for family, place, and friendship, the personal essays in All We Have Loved are a testament to the importance of preserving memories. Spanning from a mother’s memories of the Great Depression in a WNC cotton mill village to the author’s own 1960s upbringing and current life in rural WNC, this book will enlighten and entertain the reader.
Julia Nunnally Duncan is a native of Western North Carolina with family connections in East Tennessee. Her 1960s childhood, her family, and her hometown, Marion, NC, have inspired her writing and fill the pages of All We Have Loved—a slice of small town Southern life. Julia is an award-winning freelance writer and author of eleven books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She lives with her husband, Steve, a mountain woodcarver, in WNC. They enjoy their rural home and spending time with their daughter, Annie.
Book can be purchased at Sassafras on Sutton for a 20% discount, or online.
June 27th: While the Earth Still Speaks, with author Nancy Werking Poling
Can women rescue the planet from ecological disaster? When Elizabeth’s young-adult daughter, Angelica, joins a cadre of eco-terrorists, Elizabeth must decide for herself how far she’s willing to go on this environmental crusade.
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Mary (more crone than Blessed Virgin) has chosen Elizabeth as her mouthpiece in an environmental campaign to rescue Earth. Ample port-a-potties must be built on Elizabeth’s North Carolina farm, and meal-preparation organized for the busloads of women who attend the apparitions.
When Mary despairs of women accomplishing “diddlysquat,” she abruptly quits the appearances. Meanwhile, much to Elizabeth’s grief, Angelica has taken Mary’s words seriously and become an eco-terrorist.
Feeling abandoned, Elizabeth must now decide for herself just how committed she is to environmental activism.
Nancy Werking Poling is the author of While Earth Still Speaks, an environmental novel; Before It Was Legal: a black-white marriage (1945-1987), non-fiction; and Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman, a short story collection. After her essay, “Leander’s Lies,” won the 2018 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize, she set about turning the narrative into a novel, scheduled to be published under the same title in late 2025. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She maintains a website (https://nancypoling.com/) and posts on Facebook and Instagram. She lives in Black Mountain.
Book can be purchased at Sassafras on Sutton for a 20% discount, or online.
