Join the Long-running Juniper Bends Reading Series for our FAll 2026 edition!
curated by Locke Hunter and Brit Washburn
About Juniper Bends | Juniper Bends has been a beloved Asheville reading series for 15 years! The series nurtures the voices of new and emerging writers and creatives while providing a space for local established writers to showcase their work.
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Whitney holds an MFA from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She teaches writing at Western Carolina University and the Great Smokies Writing Program. Her poetry appears in The Cincinnati Review, storySouth, River Heron, One Art, The Shore, About Place Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Asheville, NC.
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Emily is the author of the young adult novel-in-verse Four Months Past Florence (Andrews McMeel, 2023) and the full-length poetry collection Jalubí (Unsolicited Press, 2022), in addition to two poetry chapbooks: Hypochondria, Least Powerful of the Greek Gods (Glass Poetry Press, 2020) and I’ll Build Us a Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018).
Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize.
She currently works as a higher education fundraiser and lives in Asheville, NC with her Libra husband, their Libra son, and their two cats, Gator & Minnow.
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Catherine is the author of four full-length poetry collections with Louisiana State University press, the most recent of which is By Stone and Needle (LSU Press 2025) and of two chapbooks with Jacar Press.
Her work has appeared in Poetry, Orion, Ploughshares, RHINO, Asheville Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, NCLR, and Best American Poetry 2009, among others, and has won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Award, the Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, the James Applewhite Poetry Prize, and Louisiana State University Press’ L.E. Phillabaum award.
She is a professor at Western Carolina University; on a good day, she can re-queen a hive of honeybees and roll a whitewater kayak, and on less-good days, she collects stings, rock-rash, and multiple contusions.
Books will be available for purchase, and the authors will sign them.
Students can attend for free with proof of current student ID, but MUST RSVP at the above ticketing link.