United States
Melanie McGee Bianchi is a lifestyle journalist and fiction writer from Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Gold industry award from the International Festival & Events Association for special-section editing. Melanie was a spelling-bee champ from age 10-14 and had a brief romp in juvenilia, winning several poetry and fiction contests in her tween and teen years, and, in her twenties, publishing in the late-'80s/early-'90s hipster magazine Sassy.
Melanie's first book, Ballad of Cherrystoke + Other Stories, is forthcoming from Blackwater Press in 2022.
Three stories in the collection have been previously published: "The Wasted Fury" in the Winter 2018/2019 edition of the international literary journal The Moth Magazine (Ireland, UK, Paris, Melbourne, NYC); "Ballad of Cherrystoke" in the Summer 2020 Annual Prize Issue of The Mississippi Review; and "It's Called Overwintering" in the Winter 2020/2021 edition of The Chattahoochee Review.
Melanie has published poetry in The Kudzu Review, Asheville Poetry Review, and The Citron Review. She has been shortlisted in two national poetry chapbook competitions (Black Warrior Review, 2011; Tusculum Review, 2014) and was nominated for a "Best of the Net" award and a Pushcart Prize for her poem "Alexander Calder and the Curve of Disillusion."
Melanie has placed personal essays in outlets including Gateways Arts Journal and the popular online forum “Scary Mommy.” An essay she wrote about Zelda Fitzgerald was referenced for a book by NPR's Maureen Corrigan: "So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why it Endures." Melanie was a speaker at several events tied to Asheville's Zelda Fitzgerald Festival. She's also given guest lectures on journalism topics at local Warren Wilson College and Lenoir-Rhyne University.
From 1997 to 2007, Melanie was the Arts & Entertainment Editor of Mountain Xpress, a member paper of the national Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. From 2007-2012 she freelanced here and there, staying home with her only child until he began kindergarten. She went on to edit the women's magazine VERVE (2012-2014), a tab-size (11x17") print monthly that included an international fashion photographer (Zaire Kacz) and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer (Matt Rose) on its masthead.
Melanie is currently editor of three print lifestyle publications: Asheville Made, Bold Life, and Carolina Home + Garden, collectively published under Planet Zeus Media (Hendersonville, NC). She's written countless articles on the visual and performing arts, architecture, interior design, horticulture, outdoor pursuits, music, food, and trends, under her own name and many pseudonyms including Austine Miller, Blaise Covert, Catherine Brooke Eastman, M.J. Bianchi, and M.J. MacAodh.
Celebrity interviews include Doc Watson, R.L. Burnside, Loretta Lynn, Patty Loveless, Lily Allen, Neko Case, Aimee Mann, Patterson Hood, Alex Matisse, Kelly McGillis, Gillian Welch, and David Sedaris. Melanie's favorite career memento is a postcard Sedaris sent her from Germany showing three giant mice on their hind legs holding paws around an unconscious cat.
Her cottage in the Blue Ridge Mountains sits on a steep hill populated by poison oak, widow spiders, a red-hawk family, and the occasional copperhead, plus an aggressive groundhog, Solomon, who thrives on her failed garden. She is married and her son is a teenager. Her only dedicated hobby is napping.
by Melanie McGee Bianchi We were whispering about boys, the few who'd aced the minute thrust of romance and the rest - hopeless - which ones were bound to leave us and which ones deserved our best leaving this was before you moved to Red Hook and floated to older and older lovers -...
I wept quietly through the first Lord of the Rings, not because I was moved by Peter Jackson's valorous drama, but because I didn't get what in the ever-loving hell was going on. Newly married, I was aiming to please, watching the movie at my in-laws' house, trying to be a good sport.
The nearly four-hour show, with DJ Plain Ole Bill scratching next to Ant, was a vibrant bravura for Atmosphere's Rhymesayers Entertainment label, home to Aesop Rock's critically acclaimed latest release (The Impossible Kid) and the proving ground of the beloved late rapper Eyedea.
Gillian Welch doesn't hurry. Revival, her first disc, dropped 20 years ago. Between that day and today, we've experienced three polarizing presidents, 9/11 and other apocalyptic losses of innocence, a technological new world order, and bacon-flavored ice cream. And yet, atmospherically speaking, her song remains the same.
There's no question that West Asheville is fashionable, chummy, and rife with good food. But no one ever said it was easy to build here. The neighborhood's close living and generally idiosyncratic mountain infrastructure, including curvy streets and angular lots, presents challenges to architects trying to create dream homes for clients.
It's not as showy as its cousin, rhododendron, but mountain laurel, with narrower leaves and prim clusters of pastel blossoms, is deceptively alluring. An evergreen that thrives in high elevations and acidic soil, the native Western North Carolina species is also related to the classic bay laurel, whose recognizable leaves were once woven into Greek head wreaths.
Winging out over a steep slope in blithe disregard for gravity, the future home of interior designer Charlton Bradsher will be unimpeachably modern. But it's not a steely-cold modern - it's a warm, involved modern: like a bird recently spotted by scientists, and found to be rare.
In the groove where foodie culture meets its makers, fine-art heir Alex Matisse continues to shape his name. For the past year, Matisse has taken a break from sculpting signature vessels at his rural East Fork Pottery operation in Madison County, and, with his business partner John Vigeland, has turned instead to producing small-batch, heirloom-intentioned dinnerware.
In one way, Paul and Sarah Klaassen got lucky. When the couple left the high-end restaurantindustry to focus on two of their own favorite foods, comfort staples that have enjoyed a recent fancying up in foodie circles, they were able to brand their idea with a charming double-duty pun.
In Georgian England, wit could trump even wallet in determining one's eligibility for courtship. And physical appearance, though rarely a dealmaker, was always mentioned first. She bangs: Lily Allen doesn't take rejection lightly. In her debut album Smile, she skewers a loutish ex-boyfriend with revealing songs like "Not Big."
In 1994, the year Mountain Xpress started, I was sharing a $365/month place in Montford with my sister. It was a narrow little flat in a Victorian-era home, its backyard adjacent to the property where Zelda Fitzgerald died in a mental-hospital fire in 1948. The same apartment, no bigger but much refurbished, rents for $950...
Homelessness is hard to see in Hendersonville. It's not apparent driving down wide, picturesque Main Street, where even the traffic lights are hung low, to keep the view intact. Life-sized painted bear statues, the city's whimsical hallmark, hold out their thick paws - but they're not looking for change.
A gray-and-white rescue cat called Edward greets visitors with a shy blink just inside the doors of The Orchard Inn. He wanders outside to the enormous front verandah, looks over the grounds, and, when he's ready, pads down the stairs and noses around for a nip of clover.
It's not necessary to know that Honey and Salt is a work by Carl Sandburg to enjoy Honey and Salt, the namesake breakfast-and-brunch spot in Flat Rock. But it flavors the farm-to-table experience with a certain poetic resonance.