Soul Waters Rising: An Appalachian Pause

Name: Soul Waters Rising: An Appalachian Pause
Start: 2024-10-31T10:00:00+1100
End: 2024-10-31T12:00:00+1100

Thu, Oct 31, 10am - 12pm AEDT

Online Event

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Holly Haworth

20 followers · Contact host

Event description

Soul Waters Rising: An Appalachian Pause
Online Benefit Reading for Helene-Impacted Communities

This gathering will be a time to pause, reflect, & collect wisdom, a time to honor our place & support our communities. Your ticket purchase will benefit rural mutual aid organizations working to get people housed & cared for. It will also support Mergoat Magazine, covering Southern Appalachian ecologies on the cusp of catastrophe & futurity. As we heal our communities, we must support the publications that care for our communal stories.

The many rivers & creeks interlacing the mountains & valleys of Western North Carolina, East Tennessee, & Southwest Virginia swelled to catastrophic levels last month as Hurricane Helene dumped unimaginable amounts of moisture from the exceptionally warm Gulf. Some 400 miles away from where the storm made landfall, countless homes, roads, & even whole towns were destroyed throughout our region. Lives have been lost & changed forever. The riparian ecosystems of the most biodiverse waters in the temperate world have suffered in ways we are still struggling to make sense of.

As the flood waters receded, our soul waters rose—in grief for these times & the ecological crises that are upon us, and with love for the land & for one another. As so much has come apart, Southern Appalachia has come together, ready to envision new ways of being, to meet the unknown future with open hearts. The title for the gathering is inspired by the work of Jaiya John, who has said, “I love tears, I love crying, I love the soul water rising. …When we connect with ourselves, when we reunion home & when we reunion with each other in a pure way, that’s what naturally happens, the soul waters rise.”

Join us for an evening of poetry, spoken word, stories, & music, as our soul waters rise together in these times of trouble.

Hosted by Holly Haworth
In partnership with Mergoat Magazine

Benefitting
Rural Organizing and Resilience (R.O.A.R.)
Tri-Cities Mutual Aid
Holler2Holler
& Mergoat Magazine

Featuring
Black Atticus
Nickole Brown
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Kristopher Drummond
Jesse Graves
Raye Hendrix
Laura Hope-Gill
Lisa Kwong
J. Drew Lanham
Rose McLarney
Mark Powell
Ron Rash
Matthew Wimberly

Disturbance ecology
with Beverly Collins

Honoring the rivers Swannanoa, French Broad, and Nolichucky with
Timothy Boyer, President, Western North Carolina Muskie Club
Luke Etchison, aquatic biologist, NC Wildlife Resources Commission

With music by
Mother Marrow
Jim Veteto, elder seed-saver

Note: The title of this event is inspired by the work of the poet Jaiya John but is not affiliated with his company Soul Water Rising. To learn more about Dr. John, visit soulwater.org.

Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity

Hostinformation

Holly Haworth

20 followers

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An essayist and reporter, I write at the intersection of ecology, history, spirituality, and culture. My essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Orion, Literary Hub, Lapham’s Quarterly, Oxford American, The Bitter Southerner, Creative Nonfiction, Terrain.org, Virginia Quarterly Review, In These Times, The Utne Reader, Sierra, and at the On Being radio program blog. They have been included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and listed as notable in The Best American Travel Writing. I am a recipient of the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism and have been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. My first nonfiction book, This Resounding World: A Field Guide to Listening, has received the Robert B. Silvers Foundation Grant for Works in Progress.

I am also a poet. My poems have appeared in The Southern Humanities Review and been anthologized in A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia. My first book of poems, The Way the Moon, is out now at Mercer University Press. It has been nominated for the Weatherford Award.

In addition to writing, I am an educator, a forager, an herbalist, and a naturalist. I earned a Southern Appalachian naturalist certificate at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute. Originally from East Tennessee, I have spent most of my life in Southern and Central Appalachia and am currently based in the Georgia Piedmont.

I have chosen to support Rural Organizing and Resilience (R.O.A.R.), Tri-Cities Mutual Aid, and Holler2Holler, as well as Mergoat Magazine for this fundraiser. I have been moved by the thought, vision, and attention with which Mergoat has met this moment, and I am passionate about supporting meaningful journalism in our region as we move deeper into a challenging future. Mergoat Magazine covers Southern Appalachian ecologies on the cusp of catastrophe and futurity. Mergoat has generously partnered with me to create graphics and promote the event so we can raise as much as possible for the mutual aid organizations that are working to help the people of Southern Appalachia. Thank you all for supporting these causes!

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Thu, Oct 31, 10am - 12pm AEDT

Online Event

Hosted by Holly Haworth