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....

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 t...

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 covera...

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 ...

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 tha...

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, ...

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 ...

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 to...

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...

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 Ash...

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 han...

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 Hosp...

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 peopl...

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 ...

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 the...

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 ...

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...

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 hom...

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.Ashevil...

Who says rock music is dying out? A trio of sisters from Asheville are doing their part to bring rock to a new generation. Detective Blind takes the spotlight in the second episode of The Overlook drawn from our May 28 evening of He...

This is the second half of my conversation with Hedy Fischer and Gail McCarthy, who along with their artist husbands bought buildings in the River Arts District early on and are committed to keeping those buildings open and affordable for other...

Hedy Fischer and Gail McCarthy have been in Asheville since the late 1970s and, along with their artist husbands, played critical roles in the evolution of the River Arts District from a neglected, polluted wasteland of warehouses into the thri...

Hear Here is a performance and podcast series designed to elevate conversation around local rock and indie music.  I invited two all-female bands to the May 28 evening of Hear Here at Citizen Vinyl. The bands...

There are about 400 Bee City USA programs across 47 states, all with a mission to sustain pollinators by increasing native plants and nest sites while reducing the use of pesticides. The entire Bee City movement started in Asheville 12 ...

Pete Candler wears many creative hats. He’s a photographer and maker of short films—all of it self-taught—and he’s also an author and recovering academic.His new book, titled “A Deeper South," is both an internal and external travelogue ...