The city is touting its significant bounty of authors.
Jimmy MacKenzie stopped at the center of a city block to tout “Asheville’s literary towering genius,” Thomas Wolfe. “And I mean that literally and figuratively,” says MacKenzie. “He was one of the greatest writers of his generation. He was also six-and-a-half feet tall. So he’s a giant in both ways.”
Wolfe was born at Asheville, North Carolina, on Oct. 3, 1900, and grew up around his mother’s boardinghouse and his father’s monument shop, says MacKenzie.
Today, the late author of “Look Homeward Angel” is one of the stars of the newly developed Asheville Lit Tour (AVL).
“Everything on this tour is from a book written about Asheville, in Asheville or written by someone staying in Asheville,” says MacKenzie, 40, who founded this 90-minute walking tour with an old college friend, 32-year-old Sarah Giavedoni.
Characters on this jaunt include writers Wilma Dykeman, John Ehle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Frazier, James Patterson, Carl Sandburg and Asheville’s ghost-guru Joshua P. Warren. Tours begin and end at the downtown fountain near the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, 2 S. Pack Square.
“We had a wealth of local literary knowledge,” says MacKenzie. “I’ve always been a reader, and I’ve always just been interested in literature. There’s a lot here in Asheville, but there’s a lot that you’re missing, and that’s the whole historical literature thing. When you dive into it, it’s bottomless.”
Asheville Lit Tour: Tours held on Wednesdays, 6 p.m.; and on Saturdays and Sundays at 4 p.m. Cost is $25. Visit avllitmap.com or email avllitmap@gmail.com.
The story above appears in our September/October 2019 issue. For more subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you for your support!
