Joni Ray, executive director of the Ashe County Arts Council, grew up in the county and returned as an adult after developing an early interest in the arts. The article discusses the background of Ashe County's literary festival and efforts to make literature more accessible to residents.
Recap by left917 · read the full story at the source
Joni Ray came home. She grew up in Ashe County, left to chase the arts somewhere else, and came back as an adult to run the Arts Council. Now she is building a literary festival to crack open a problem nobody talks about out loud, a county full of readers and writers with almost nowhere to gather and share what they make. The festival exists because Ray decided the arts were not a luxury for somewhere else, they were infrastructure here.
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