Building on its successful 27 Views series, Eno Publishers showcases the literary community of Asheville, North Carolina, in 27 Views of Asheville: A Southern Mountain Town in Prose & Poetry . Twenty-seven writers contribute poetry, essays, short stories, and book excerpts that focus on the fabled mountain town, offering readers a broad and varied picture of life in Asheville, past and present, as well as a sense of the town's literary breadth. Contributing authors include Sharyn McCrumb, Gail Godwin, Ron Rash, Pamela Duncan, Nan Chase, Allan Wolf, Dale Neal, Charles Frazier, and Robert Morgan. A fictionalized account of a battle between citizens and developers in the 1980s; reflections on the legacy of Thomas Wolfe; a look at Asheville's literary renaissance; and a poem by Robert Morgan recalling milkshakes at the Asheville Dairy Bar are just a few of the topics covered in this literary montage. The cover illustration is by Daniel Wallace, author of the novel Big Fish . 27 Views of Asheville presents a brightly colored, kaleidoscopic vision of a city lately come to prominence for its metropolitan ambience and cultural background. Here is a place full of variety and surprise, yet over it hangs an atmosphere of the old-time hometown. It is as if the spirit of Thomas Wolfe invested each space and object with a mist of nostalgia. Asheville is a soul ful town, "filled with heartache remembering history," as one writer puts it. Yet everywhere is an easy gaiety. So it is absolutely untrue that those who call Asheville "the Paris of the South" are holding a grudge against Paris. They know how it is. These days, Paris should be so luck. --Fred Chappell, novelist 27 Views of Asheville is the third in a series of 27 Views by Eno Publishers, following works on Chapel Hill and Hillsborough. It provides the reader with vignettes on Asheville's past and present in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Asheville is a multifaceted town, and the authors touch on many aspects of the city s personality. --NC Library Association It is not mandatory that a reader be familiar with (let alone a lover of) the works of the late novelist Thomas Wolfe in order to appreciate the new anthology, 27 Views of Asheville: A Southern Mountain Town in Prose & Poetry . And it s not required that one be a current, former, or sometime resident of this storied and much-loved North Carolina hamlet. Surely a discerning, open-minded reader who has perhaps never even been to Asheville, or maybe never even heard of Asheville, will still appreciate the colorful panorama sketched by the twenty-seven writers whose work graces these pages. There is so much to recommend this spirited, diverse, and muscular collection of personal essays, narrative nonfiction, memoir shorts, prose poems, narrative poetry, and short stories, and a true reader will definitely find favorites among the panoply of offerings. --FOREWORD Reviews, May 2012 For 20 years, Rob Neufeld has written about the literature and history of western North Carolina for the Asheville Citizen-Times . He has led acclaimed region-wide reading programs for seven years as the director of Together We Read and now as the director of Mountain Lit. Neufeld also created The Read on WNC (thereadonwnc.ning.com), a website for regional books and heritage. Ron Rash called Neufeld "the person who has done more than anyone else to promote reading in this region." Neufeld has published books of local interest and collaborated with author Gail Godwin on The Making of a Writer: Journals , vols. 1 and 2.