Celebratory months usually see a lot of fanfare at the beginning, while enthusiasm tapers off by the end. But when it comes to allocating one month of the year to celebrate half the planet’s humans, we believe all 31 days are important. For that reason, we wanted to take one last day to celebrate this year’s Women’s History Month.
As a local-centric literacy nonprofit, we welcome you to take a few moments to learn more about eleven Asheville-based authors and influencers. We begin with one of our city’s most notorious residents:
1. Famed wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald and accomplished artist and author in her own right, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald has a rich history in Asheville, though ultimately a dark one. Zelda stayed several times at Highland Hospital in the Montford neighborhood, where art played a large part in her therapy. Her painting, Japanese Magnolias, hangs in the Asheville Art Museum’s permanent collection. About 50 years ago, critics turned their eyes to Zelda’s art to mostly positive reviews. Many see influences like Impressionist Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe. Zelda tragically died in a fire at the hospital in 1948.
2. Sarah Addison Allen is a New York Times bestselling author, Asheville native, and UNC Asheville alumna (go Bulldogs!). Among her books are The Sugar Queen, Lost Lake, and First Frost.
3. Best-selling novelist Patricia Cornwell, who has written a stack of books featuring the crime-fighting medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, grew up in Black Mountain.
4. Wilma Dykeman’s The French Broad had a revolutionary impact upon 20th century society. Dykeman saw the beautiful French Broad River become a dumping ground for tires and pollution and helped shift people’s consciousness years before the 1970s’ Green Movement. Dykeman won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship among many other awards, distinctions, and teaching designations. Dykeman died in 2006 and is buried at Beaverdam Baptist Church.
5. Guggenheim Fellowship winner and author Gail Godwin grew up in Asheville. She attended St. Genevieve’s of the Pines until the ninth grade. Godwin put her Catholic school upbringing into her book Unfinished Desires. The school has now moved, but parts of it from Godwin’s time still stand. A-B Tech now owns parts of the former St. Genevieve School. It’s now the Ivy Building on campus, which is the school’s theater/gymnasium.
6. In the early 1950s, Irene O. Hendrick worked in the public area of the “Colored Library” in the YMI Building on S. Market Street downtown. The library branch for the black citizens of Asheville opened in 1927 and then became the Market Street Branch of City Libraries in 1951. Mrs. Hendrick was the first librarian for the branch library and continued her tenure as supervisor through the desegregation of the library system until the branch was closed in 1966.
7. Denise Kiernan is an American journalist, producer, and author who lives in Asheville. She has authored several history titles, including Signing Their Lives Away and The Girls of Atomic City.
8. Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian, is a former Asheville resident with long family ties to the community, including to the Captain’s Bookshelf on Page Avenue, where she once worked. The Historian grabbed the attention of librarians and booksellers last January when Kostova received the largest advance ($2 million) ever paid for a first novel. With a first printing of 325,000 and movie rights sold to Sony Pictures, it is sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year.
9. Eisner Award Winner Hope Larson (A Wrinkle In Time, Mercury) grew up in Asheville and attended Carolina Day School. Spellbound Children’s Bookshop on Merrimon Avenue has welcomed Larson from time to time for book and graphic novel signings.
10. Brevard native Megan Shepherd worked briefly for the City of Asheville. Her Madman’s Daughter gothic YA series was released in 2013 to positive reviews and another YA sci-fi trilogy, beginning with The Cage, is currently in progress.
And as a bonus, a prestigious Asheville visitor:
11. Author Edith Wharton was a guest of the Vanderbilts at the Biltmore House several times. Her first signature in the mansion’s guest book is dated November 1902. Wharton signed a new copy of her book The House of Mirth to George Vanderbilt during Christmas of 1905 and still has a suite named after her on the sixth floor of the mansion. Wharton was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature several times. She became the first female to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1921.
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How many of these amazing Asheville women have you read or read about? We certainly didn’t know how many local authors and literary legends we had until we started exploring. But we are now even more proud to live in a city with as dynamic of a literary history as Asheville, NC.
I’ve seen Megan Shepherd’s work celebrated in Europe and Asia and couldn’t be more proud to have her represent us in WNC!
We’re big fans, too!