Author David Joy has been gaining recognition for a pair of critically acclaimed novels, both set in rural Appalachia. With a third on the way, Joy has also been gaining national and international recognition as an essayist on Southern culture. Joy has a bright future penning dark novels but still finds himself perceived as being the kind of person he writes about, just because they share the same Southern drawl. “I got off a plane one time and I rode with a media escort somewhere out west and

Most people associate the Brevard Music Center with summer classical concerts featuring world-class performers in an open-air auditorium. Away from the spotlight, about 400 teens and twentysomethings come from around the country to spend most of their summer studying classical performance at Brevard Music Center. “I’m totally illiterate when it comes to pop culture, because my head is in classical music,” said Myles McKnight, an 18-year-old violinist from Hendersonville.

The remote, Western North Carolina town of Highlands is known for its leafy mountains, tony shops and pricey living. Only 941 people claimed it as their home on the last census. That doesn’t seem to deter some of the nation’s top young stage talent from spending their summers at Highlands Playhouse , building up their resumes and entertaining a largely senior audience with the tried and true in musical theater.

Robert Beatty was still in his 30s when he sold his tech company for millions of dollars and moved with his wife and three daughters from Michigan to 32 acres of green forest in Fletcher. Beatty never had to work again, and his story could have ended there. But success in business was just one of his two life goals. Beatty set a detailed, determined plan to fulfill the second. “I am constantly looking out at what I want out in the future and where I want to be and make decisions at this moment

Brooklyn Reese is 12 years old and, when she’s healthy, she’s sort of a second mother to her younger sister and brother. “Before I got sick, I had a lot of responsibility, because Izzy, she had trouble with math and homework, so when we got home from school, I’d help her with her homework,” she said. “And I’d take care of Jackson and give him a sippy and make him a peanut butter sandwich.”

Holly Kays studied creative fiction in college and saw herself on a path to becoming a novelist. “Everybody who likes to write is writing a book at some point,” she said. “Most of those books never actually wind up being written.” Like most budding novelists, Kays has another job to pay her bills. Unlike most, Kays works for a sympathetic boss.

Mike Martinez doesn’t like talking about growing up in Union, N.J., but he will say moving to Hendersonville as an 18-year-old saved his life. “I was getting in trouble in ways I don’t necessarily want to talk about, but I was definitely not the right path,” he said. “I’m not even sure I’d be alive if I lived in New Jersey.”

Jeb Hedgecock didn’t intend to devote his senior year at UNC-Asheville to someone else’s sculptural project. But that someone else was the acclaimed conceptual artist Mel Chin , so Hedgecock figured he might learn more by helping a master realize his vision. “It’s a completely different thing investing yourself into something you want to into something you don’t necessarily want to but need to,” Hedgecock said.

If you feel a rumbling in the air this week, don’t look to the weather report. Instead, check out the schedule for the Asheville Percussion Festival . To the ears of founder River Guerguerian , this festival is as much about community as it is about music. “I look at it like there’s a kitchen, there’s 10-12 cooks, each cook brings one recipe,” he said. “You put the recipe on the table and we all work on it together.”

Like a lot of excited, ambitious entrepreneurs, Heather Maloy put her head down and bulled forward with her plan: She wanted to create a fulltime professional ballet company in Asheville. “With it being a summer tourist community and being very alive in the summer, it seemed like a great starting point,” she said. “But I wasn’t really thinking fully how to get past that summer point to a year-round point.”