HATCHed

What’s the future hold? Here are a few hints from the HATCH festival, held in Asheville April 15-19. Gaming notions Like the Grateful Dead? This August, Curious Sense is releasing a virtual, social-networking Deadhead game where players can scavenger hunt for VW Beetles in real life and post photos online for points. But video games […]

Selfless acts

Skin covered with blistering scabs, the little girl stares at the “blanc” doctor examining her wounds. An older boy, another orphan, gently unbuttons the strap on her pink dress and lifts her arm, revealing a yellow, golf-ball-sized abscess protruding from black skin. She starts to cry. To learn more about Mission MANNA and how you […]

Lorin Mallorie in Haiti: If you are Haitian, Wyclef Jean, prove it now!

When I heard the whispers of a Wyclef Jean presidential bid, I simply dismissed them. It seemed like an impossible concept, water-cooler talk — something fun to debate: Could he, would he run, this 37-year-old Haitian musician, and of late, politician, who moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 9 years old. After the announcement was official, Deva Krishna, the unemployed musician in the video spoke to me of his concerns, worries of corruption in Wyclef’s organization…

UNCA alumna Amber Munger founds nonprofit Article 29 for Haiti

UNCA alumna and Oregon Law School graduate Amber Munger captivated Asheville after the Jan. 12 earthquake, when her plea-for-help ran on the front page of the Asheville Citizen-Times.  Now, Munger has founded her own nonprofit, the Article 29 Organization, working with Haitian peasantry in Commune Anse Rouge, five hours north of Haiti’s capital. 

Lorin Mallorie in Haiti: From voodoo priests to Christians­, thousands celebrate, mourn life at Sodo

Descending into the waterfall’s basin, the mass of bodies becomes its own living, breathing entity. Moving together in one vibration, in exuberant celebration of all life’s glories and defeats, the drums, horns and songs rise above the waterfall’s massive force.
So starts Asheville journalist Lorin Mallorie’s report from last week’s Sodo celebration.

Everything is illuminate­d

Three months before I was due to graduate and launch a career as a print journalist, the realization struck like a lightning bolt: I want to make movies. Go figure. With my rational mind furiously battling my heart, the easiest thing would be simply to sideline my vision and walk stiffly out into the working […]

Surviving Port-au-Prince

Editor's note: Shortly before Christmas, UNCA senior Lorin Mallorie traveled to Haiti at the invitation of UNCA alumna Amber Munger, who gave a lecture on her work there last fall (see "Gratitude, Hugs and Tears," March 3 Xpress). Wanting to dig deeper, Mallorie returned to Haiti last month, using the contacts she'd made during her […]