North Carolina heritageAsheville
Look homeward, to Asheville
Thomas Wolfe was born in Asheville in 1900. His first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, came out in 1929 and drew closely on the town and on the boardinghouse his mother ran there.
The house still stands downtown. Today it is the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, a state historic site you can walk through.
Wolfe is one stop of many. The North Carolina Arts Council’s Literary Trails of North Carolina guidebooks map the state, mountains to coast, by the writers tied to each place.
Sources: NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (Thomas Wolfe Memorial); NC Arts Council (Literary Trails of North Carolina).