ICYMI: Xpress longreads from the week

Looking for some longform (or longerform) reads to cozy up with over the weekend? Here’s a round-up of our leading feature stories from the last seven days. Happy reading!

Arts

Jamie Kornegay makes his literary debut with ‘Soil’
By Corbie Hill

When Mississippi-based author Jamie Kornegay was working on his debut novel, he took weeklong writing trips to a friend’s isolated cabin outside Black Mountain. He was inspired but lonely; he missed his family. During one retreat in early 2010, when news of the devastating Haiti earthquake reached him, he found he couldn’t take it. He drove into Asheville to catch a movie — The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy’s cheerless, apocalyptic novel. “The earthquake was so soul-crushing, and the movie was so depressing,” he says. “That was the frame of mind a lot of this was written in.” (Continue reading)

Mountain bike accident leads to a stunning visual project and a new career
By Lisa Waters

A mountain bike accident left Banner Elk-based adventurer William Mauney with severe injuries that interrupted his normally active lifestyle. Despite weeks of physical therapy and crutches, canes, aligns and braces, he decided to pick up a DSLR camera and figure out how to use it. The results are stunning. (Continue reading)

Food

Farm to School’s taste-test program steers kids from french fries to kale
By Pat Barcas

The kids line up in the school cafeteria, each receiving a slab of cheese pizza, perhaps a scoop of corn, some fruit and a carton of chocolate milk. The food materializes on their plate, but where does it come from? For many children, the links between food supply and school lunch are murky at best. But the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project’s Growing Minds Farm to School program aims to shine some light on the problem, helping forge connections that can lead to a lifetime of better health. (Continue reading)

From dirt to dining room: Restaurant gardens give new meaning to farm-to-table cuisine
By Jacqui Castle

Peter Pollay grew up in New York City and spent the days of his youth surrounded by concrete, playing games on the pavement. Never having spent much time in nature, gardening was a completely abstract concept to him until recently. Now Pollay, owner of downtown restaurant Posana, has added the title of farmer to his resume, adding a new meaning to “locally sourced produce.” (Continue reading)

Living

Healing from the Hive
By Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt

Apitherapy — or bee therapy — is considered more anecdotal than scientific by much of the medical community. But local practitioners say bees can have a dramatic effect on healing — from the treatment of arthritis to recovery from trauma. (Continue reading)

Boys club: My Daddy Taught Me That youth program provides positive role models
By Alli Marshall

If you think your day is busy, try keeping up with Keynon Lake. The Asheville native is an author, mentor, social worker, radio host and public speaker. And while these ventures are varied, they all share a common thread: working to better the community that Lake calls home. “One of the biggest issues I’d noticed from being a Child Protective Services social worker was … all the single moms,” he says. “ …. It wasn’t a race problem, it was a human problem. Where are these fathers?” (Continue reading)

Sustainability

We also rolled out some selections from the 2015 Get It! Guide, but you can read the whole thing on stands and online.

Green developments: How Asheville’s public housing communities are leading the eco-scene
By Carrie Eidson

Green jobs, lush community gardens, community cookouts and water quality testing — these might not be things many in Asheville picture when they think of public housing. But residents says Asheville’s public housing neighborhoods are investing in their communities’ welfare and leading a growing interest in “greening” up the neighborhoods.  (Continue reading)

Alternative energy may be the key to a self-sustaining economy for N.C.
By Pat Barcas

For a long time the clean energy industry has been considered futuristic, unestablished, maybe even a little strange. But with advances in technology, juicy state and federal tax incentives, and the ability to keep both jobs and cash local, alternative energy is no longer a fringe provider but a serious plan for the future. Data collected by the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association shows that the alternative energy sector contributed $4.8 billion in annual state gross revenue in 2014. All that revenue is a result of local jobs that are booming. (Continue reading)