Asheville hosted the National Poetry Slam in 1994, and the local team — including Danny Solis, Kim Holzer, Ted Vacca and the late Pat Storm — won the championship in 1995, in Ann Arbor, Mich. That team grew out of early Asheville- based slams at The Green Door, a venue on Carolina Lane. Poets associated with that series included Allan Wolf (who co-founded educational program Poetry Alive!) and James Nave (co-founder of Poetry Alive! and host of the LEAF Poetry Slam).
Asheville was also the original host city of the Southern Fried Poetry Slam, which launched in 1993. Cecil Bothwell won that year, Solis in ’94 and ’95, and former Ashevillean Glenis Redmond in ’97 (she also won in ’98 but was representing Greenville, S.C., her current residence, by then). —A.M.
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