Like a lot of artistic corners of Asheville, the city’s improv theater scene is far more robust than you’d expect in a town this size. A natural extension of the scene's growth is the Asheville Improv Festival, debuting May 7-10. Longtime Asheville journalist Matt Peiken is also a longtime improviser. He used the occasion of the upcoming festival to gather four important players in the scene—Gillian Bellinger, founder of Misfit Improv; Laurie Jones, co-founder of Adesto Theater, Tim He...

Twenty years ago, when Parker Pfister moved to Asheville, he made his living shooting photographs at the weddings of celebrities. Over the ensuing years, Pfister has explored his own curiosities, both through his viewfinder and in the darkroom. His manipulated images resonate with dualities that convey multiple meanings and emotions. He’s a prolific photographer, and yet it’s surprising that only now is he seeing his first solo gallery exhibition, through Mars Landing Galleries in Mars Hill...

While Hurricane Helene disrupted virtually every life and way of life in this region, at least one thing is happening as scheduled—the 2024 election. Today, I talk with Amanda Edwards, a member of the Buncombe County Commission who is running to succeed the departing Brownie Newman as chair. Here, in a conversation that took place weeks before Helene struck, Edwards talks about her motivations for entering electoral politics and the issues that motivate her today. Our conversation runs throug...

Amid thousands of people in Western North Carolina who’ve lost so much, scores of artists with studios in the River Arts District, in Swannanoa, and in downtown Marshall saw their livelihoods and life’s work washed away. I begin my coverage of Hurricane Helene's impact and aftermath with a conversation with ceramic artist, jewelry maker and my friend, Nina Kawar. For the past eight years, she has had a studio on the first floor of Marshall High Studios, on Blannahassett Island in downtown Mar...

Sage Turner first came to a seat on Asheville City Council through her fight for more affordable housing in the city. She has since become well-versed and conversant on a spectrum of issues that come before council, but she’s never dropped the torch to help develop more affordable living in Asheville. Today is the last in a six-part series of conversations with every candidate for City Council. Turner is one of two incumbents on the ballot, and she speaks with a depth of insight that can onl...

Pick an issue, and voters are likely to view it as yes/no, black-and-white question. They want to know whether their elected officials are for or against something. But Kim Roney has served on the Asheville City Council long enough to learn that behind every yes or no vote, there’s subtext and context. My series of episodes spotlighting every candidate for City Council continues here with current sitting councilperson Kim Roney. We talk about the nuances and complexities of policy decisions a...

Tod Leaven doesn’t dwell on the details when he speaks of his twin sister, who he says was battling addiction and chronic homelessness in the early 2000s when she was killed. But it isn’t a reach to see the connection with his sister, in part, fueling Leaven’s career as an attorney, his community service and his current run for a seat on Asheville’s City Council. My conversation with Tod Leaven continues our series of episodes devoted to every candidate for City Council. Today, Tod Leaven ta...

CJ Domingo has a particular insider’s vantage of the challenges facing Asheville—until relatively recently, he worked for the parking division of the city’s transportation department. He cites low morale among some city staff as a symptom of a larger void within city leadership. Today, in our continuing series looking at every candidate for city council, Asheville native CJ Domingo shares his views on a range of city issues, including frustrations with deferred infrastructure maintena...

Kevan Frazier can probably put his knowledge of Asheville history up against anyone’s. But the city native and tour guide, entrepreneur and educator hopes his encyclopedic recall of Asheville’s yesteryear can shape his approach to the city’s tomorrow. He’s one of six running for two seats on City Council. Today, in our continuing series talking with every candidate for city council, Frazier tells us about his backstory and frames his approach to all the hot-button issues atop Asheville’s lis...

This episode begins our six-part series of interviews with each candidate for Asheville City Council. Most candidates for state and federal offices started in politics at a local level. Bo Hess took a different approach. In 2020, he says, he ran for a U.S. Congressional seat as a training ground for what he wants now—a seat on Asheville’s City Council. He talks about his varied background—as a social worker, addiction specialist, therapist, law enforcement trainer, community activist,...

No matter how attuned you believe you are to the upcoming election, there’s a strong chance you have no idea who’s running for the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Today’s episode should help solve that problem. Martin Moore moved to Asheville in 2015 when he took his first job as an attorney, working as a public defender in Buncombe County. He has since opened a private practice in Asheville while serving on the Buncombe County Commission. Moore sees these as steppingstones in a life callin...

Caleb Rudow is attempting to do something no Democrat has done in more than a decade—represent North Carolina’s 11th District in the US House of Representatives. A gerrymandered map has seemingly kept this district comfortably in Republican hands, but Rudow sees a lot in his favor as he campaigns against the incumbent, Chuck Edwards. Rudow currently represents North Buncombe County in the State House. Here, we talk about his campaign, the challenge of hurdling the gerrymandered math of this ...

In the second half of this two-part conversation, founders of the coalition Reclaim Healthcare WNC talk about their pressure campaign with HCA Healthcare to dramatically and demonstrably improve conditions for patients and staff at Mission Hospital. My guests are State Senator Julie Mayfield, retired physician Bruce Kelly and Missy Harris, who recently left Mission Hospital after five years there as a chaplain. They talk about the potential for competition with Mission in the re...

So much has been written and said in the five years since the corporation HCA Healthcare purchased Asheville’s nonprofit Mission Hospital. Doctors, nurses and other staff have fled amid what many see as the company’s push for profits over people. North Carolina’s attorney general has filed lawsuits. Nobody involved in the original deal has spoken candidly about how this sale even made it across the finish line. Today is the first in a two-part conversation with leaders of a new coalition call...

Esther Manheimer is serving her third term as Asheville’s mayor. The challenges this city faces today—and the strategies deployed to tackle them—have evolved a lot during her time in office. Today, we check in with Mayor Manheimer around a variety of issues—homelessness, affordable housing, enforcing the city’s policy on short-term rentals and property tax increases, along with boosting the salaries for police officers and firefighters. We also get her assessment of how this council has perfo...

Jewish Voice for Peace is a nonprofit with chapters in Asheville and around the U.S. and beyond. Except for the name of the organization, you won’t find much about Judaism on their website or in their talking points.** They're focused on peace in the Middle East and, to JVP, that means the liberation of Palestinians. My guests are Anne Craig, Rebecca Croog and Said Abdallah from the Asheville chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. You’ll learn about their varied backgrounds and what led them to...

Jefferson Ellison is the first to say he grew up with privilege. His father was Asheville’s vice mayor and ran his own law firm for 40 years, and his mother holds two master’s degrees. Still at 31, Jefferson isn’t taking shortcuts with his own career or place in the city. He sits on the boards of the Asheville Downtown Association and the Downtown Commission, and he’s a voice of influence on The Block Collaborative, which is working with city leaders on the revisioning of Pack Square. ...

Like most leaders in the arts, Heather Maloy spends far more time raising money, hunting for rehearsal spaces and recruiting dancers than she does immersed in the work she’s so committed to—cultivating the ideas and creating the dances that are the signature of her Asheville-based company, Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance. For 21 summers, Terpsicorps has fielded troupes of young professionals from all over the U.S. and beyond, who put their feet to the fire of Maloy’s imagination. I met wi...

Carolina Quiroga moved to Asheville only about a year ago, but she’s already a distinctive storyteller here, blending folk tales and her own experiences from her native Colombia with newer stories born from observations of her newly adopted home. On July 11, she begins a residency of three weekly performances at Story Parlor in West Asheville. Today, we talk about straddling the line between her father’s expectations and her own desires, her self-appointed mission to educate certain peo...

Michael Cayse has only been Asheville’s Fire Chief since the start of the year, but he came here with more than three decades of experience in Cincinnati and, as part of that, working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Asheville firefighters received a pay raise in the new fiscal year budget of nearly 9 percent, but that still puts them behind where they’d like to be. My guest today, Chief Cayse, tells us about the other ways Asheville works to be a department that attracts and ke...