Wolfe Festival

Wolfe (Thomas) Festival

October 3

The Thomas Wolfe Festival is a celebration of the writer's birth in 1900 in Asheville, N.C. The celebrations usually extend several days beyond the actual birthday and include dramatizations of Wolfe's works, the performance of musical compositions based on his writings, workshops conducted by Wolfe scholars, and a walking tour of "Wolfe's Asheville." This includes a visit to Riverside Cemetery, where Wolfe and members of his family, as well as some of the people he fictionalized in his novels, are buried.
The center of the celebration is the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site, the boarding house run by his mother, where Thomas Wolfe grew up. It still has the sign dating back to his mother's time hanging over the porch, "Old Kentucky Home." In his famous first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, published in 1929, Wolfe fictionalized Asheville as Altamont and called the boarding house "Dixieland."
Other works by Wolfe include Of Time and the River, published in 1935, and The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again, both published after his death in 1938.

CONTACTS:
Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site
52 N. Market St.
Asheville, NC 28801
828-253-8304; fax: 828-252-8171
www.wolfememorial.com

Celebration day: Oct 3