Lewis Kyle Wilson: “I’m innocent of the charges”

Speaking to Xpress at the Buncombe County Detention Facility on Feb. 27, Lewis Kyle Wilson asserted his innocence in the face of charges of brutally assaulting and kidnapping a prostitute last November. Police have also named Wilson a “person of interest” in an unsolved 2006 murder and two other prostitute assaults in Asheville’s Riverside area. […]

A-B Tech resigns to take college president’­s job in Houston

Dr. Betty Young, inaugurated as the fourth president of A-B Tech in May 2008, officially left the college March 6 to become president of Coleman College in Houston, Texas. Her departure ended a short tenure marked by upheaval. A-B Tech’s trustees announced that they had accepted Young’s official resignation during a special meeting on campus […]

The Green Scene

Rick Borchelt is one of those rare scientists who’s also a good communicator. So says Pamela McCown, a former TV meteorologist who’s now involved in educational and job-creation initiatives in Western North Carolina. She describes Borchelt as a biologist who “was bit by the science-communication bug.” Communications director for the Genetics and Public Policy Center […]

Welcome to A&E

Sad for us, good for them: Electro-anthem dance-partiers EAR PWR play their Asheville finale at BoBo on Friday, March 13. While our claim on the band is now tenuous (Devin Booze graduates from UNCA’s music technology program in May, and Booze and PWR duo-mate Sarah Reynolds are moving to Baltimore), we’ll take what we can […]

Everything turns out nothing like the plan

For Andy Herod, there was nothing like suffering through a good existential meltdown to get his creative juices flowing. A founding member of The Comas, Herod fled the successful indie rock band last year after a nine-year run, leaving his apartment in Brooklyn for several months of couch-surfing and soul-searching that eventually led him to […]

Buncombe Commission­ers

Pitchfork-wielding activists demand lower taxes Board chips in to preserve Reems Creek farm The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners unanimously gave staff the go-ahead to work out an agreement to transfer health-care services for indigent county residents from the Health Department’s clinic to Western North Carolina Community Health Services. The move, which came during the […]

Into the vault

For journalists, keeping government operations open to scrutiny—and keeping public records public—is a year-round endeavor. But once a year, during Sunshine Week (March 15 to 21), Mountain Xpress joins thousands of publications across the country in making a special push to promote official transparency. A year ago, we marked this nationwide celebration of freedom of […]

WPVM’s interim station manager quits

The interim station manager at Asheville’s low-power FM community-radio station has resigned, likening herself to a Band-Aid stuck on a mortal wound requiring immediate surgery. Kim Clark issued her statement March 2, two weeks after her hiring as WPVM’s interim manager was announced by Wally Bowen, the executive director of the Mountain Area Information Network. […]

X-rays and Spectres

The mark of a brave artist is a willingness to take risks and challenge personal formulas. Often this evolution in creative process is as important to the work as its content. Such is the case with the latest assembly of artwork, entitled X-Rays and Spectres, by Asheville artist Lisa Nance. “I wanted to see what […]

Better homes

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, The Help (Amy Einhorn Books, 2009), is ambitious. It’s historical fiction, for starters. And it deals with race relations. And it’s 444 pages long. Momentous, important, warm, fun and quintessentially Southern: Stockett said she wanted to answer a question from her past that nagged at her: What did it feel like […]