SOLD OUT!
To add your name to the waitlist, please email us with your name, number of tickets requested, and best number to reach you day of the event.
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Tickets $20 in advance / $25 day of
Doors at 7pm | Show 7:30pm
Story Parlor | 227 Haywood Road
Parking & Policies
Our Story Mixers always sell out; grab your tickets early!
Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages available for purchase. All shows, unless specified, are ages 16+.
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The holidays, despite their bright lights and jolly jingles, can be a difficult time for many who have suffered loss in their lives. This year, on the heels of Helene and so much else, we invite you to join us for an evening of stories, music, and performance about finding good in the grief, joy in the world, and hope for the holidays.
ARTIST LINE-UP
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Raymond Barfield is a writer and doctor. He has published four books of philosophy. Two of them (The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy and The Poetic A Priori: Philosophical Imagination in a Meaningful Universe) are part of his ongoing attempt to understand what, if anything, imagination shows us about the universe and ourselves. The other two (Wager: Beauty, Suffering, and Being in the World and The Practice of Medicine as Being in Time) are part of his ongoing attempt to understand what, if anything, suffering shows us about the universe and ourselves, and to figure out how to be a good doctor while waiting for the day he has to figure out how to be a patient.
He has also published two novels (The Book of Colors and The Seventh Sentence) and two books of poetry (Life in the Blind Spot and Dreams and Griefs of an Underworld Aeronaut). His third book of poetry (Bruno Glooms on the Bridge of Sighs) will be published in early 2024. Around the same time, his third novel will be published — a novel about Immanuel Kant, regarding which the NYT Review of Books wrote, or at least should have written, or should, at some point, write, “At last, a novel that captures the riveting life of this renegade philosopher, whose adventures have long been the stuff of legend, but whose daring and outrageous courage, in both his life and his writing, made the task of producing a fictional account daunting. Readers worldwide have been clamoring for a novel about Kant, and Raymond Barfield has answered their call with his thrilling page-turner called Dreams of a Spirit Seer.”
In his day job as a palliative care physician, he is endlessly humbled and astonished by the stories his patients and their families tell him while they find their way through really hard stuff. He also enjoys supporting artists, writers, and restauranteurs. He currently focuses on the preservation of Myrtles Crepes (Savannah’s beloved monument to food-as-art-for-the-tongue) and on several projects, including the Savannah Giraffic Park Initiative developed by the ever-surprising Psylvia Olivie Amore-Fouladi — Forsyth Park activist, writer of children’s stories, and occasional lecturer on the art of curating words and bliss. Psylvia and her friend Winter honored him by giving him a lifetime appointment as writer-in-residence at Red Bird and Grackle, the famous Savannah book store, wine portal, gathering place, and publishing house across from the so-called “AT&T” building. The publishing house still works by invitation only because of the astonishing number of books it publishes, and it focuses on musical poetry in the spirit of Hopkins and Yeats, fiction that reveals character gently but deeply, and the production of high-quality popup books with political, fashion, culinary, or ontological themes. Suggestions for other popup book subjects will be considered if they do not involve porcupines, cacti, or thorny bushes that might endanger children if realistically portrayed in the popup book world.
Most recently, Ray published a novel called "Dreams of a Spirit Seer" and made it through the hurricane relatively intact.
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Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. She’s the author of Sister, first published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, Fanny Says (BOA Editions), won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015. Currently, she teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program and lives in Asheville, NC, where she volunteers at several different animal sanctuaries. Since 2016, she’s been writing about these animals. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of these first nine poems, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and her essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020. She’s President of the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, an annual environmental literary festival set to launch in Black Mountain, NC, in October 2025.
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Eldon Smith, a talented storyteller hailing from Augusta, Georgia, has been captivating audiences with his unique blend of imagery and emotion. As a devoted father of three sons, Eldon’s life is a beautiful tapestry of family, passion, and artistic expression.
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Asheville-based singer-songwriter Owen Walsh has been telling stories and performing music his entire life. Born and raised on the banks of the Lackawaxen River in Honesdale, Pennsylvania—a small, historic coal-mining town that spawned the American railroad—Owen grew up surrounded by relics of 19th Century American life and imagery ripe for musical exploitation.
Owen began playing violin at the age of three, studying formal repertoire like Mozart concertos and Bach sonatas. At 12 years old, he found his dad's dusty, old Epiphone guitar tucked away in a closet and taught himself how to play. Soon after he learned his first few chords, Owen began writing songs. He's followed in the long tradition of Americana folk music, in which lyrics are equal in importance to the melodies that bind them.
His years of formal training combined with his zest for informal improvisation create a unique blend of musical expression that incorporates the many styles Owen loves. Owen now lives and performs in Asheville, NC. He recently completed writing and recording his debut album, On My Way, which charted at #9 on Folk Radio in the second month of its release."An unusual level of professional maturity and sophistication can be found in Owen Walsh's first full-length album," says radio DJ Bruce Swan. "It is one of only a handful of recent records that needs to be listened to from start to finish; one track at a time."
In his daylight hours, Owen also works as a freelance journalist, so whether it's in print or on stage, he's always telling a story to somebody.