Events Calendar

Fireworks, Food Trucks, and live music. There is no better way to celebrate than right here in Fountain Inn! The Fountain Inn Fireworks Spectacular is full of great food and fun for the whole family. Come listen to great music, eat from delicious food trucks, and enjoy Independence Day with a fireworks show!

We’ve heard your valuable feedback, and now you don’t have to hear us! Beginning May 4, 2021, the period between 8 and 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday morning of every month will be reserved for “Meditative Mornings,” a pause for quiet time in our gardens and on our trails. During this time, our working garden crew will abstain from using leaf blowers, mowers and other equipment so you can be sure to enjoy the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees.

Take advantage of half-price parking on the first Tuesday of every month and come out to the Arboretum to enjoy a Meditative Morning!

Independence Day Fireworks

2024 RED, WHITE & BOOM PRESENTED BY SPARTANBURG COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Spartanburg’s favorite way to celebrate Independence Day!

Barnet Park is the perfect setting for Spartanburg’s Independence Day celebration. On July 4, come hungry and enjoy great food and spectacular fireworks!

Note: Parking will not be available in the First Baptist Church parking lot this year. Parking garages will be open with plenty of free parking. Learn more about our parking options throughout downtown on our Downtown Parking page.

• When: Thursday, July 4, 5:30 to 10 pm. The Fireworks display will begin around 9:30 pm.
• Admission: Free admission!

Flash Fiction Writing Group meets the 3rd Friday of each month and examines, explores and uses the elements and techniques of short fiction writing.

When you write grant requests, event invitations, annual reports, and even humble emails, you want to move your readers to action. But too often jargon, lack of practice, and outdated rules from school can get in your way.

Power up your writing in this 90 minute workshop. You’ll leave equipped to:

• Tell stories that stick
• Write sentences that sing
• Keep your focus on your reader
• Find your voice
• Scrap what you’ve learned about writing that isn’t working

About the presenter:

Katy Pugh Smith is a seasoned facilitator and planner with significant experience in convening coalitions of community members, supporting them in identifying goals and action plans, and working with them to see those plans through to results.

Katy is executive director of Greater Good Greenville, which galvanizes nonprofit organizations, philanthropic funders, and mission-minded people for collaborative problem-solving and learning, advocacy, and joint investing to address our community’s challenges.

She earned her Master of Social Work degree in administration, planning, and community organizing from University of Georgia where she co-authored and published several journal articles. But before she took the path to a career in the social sector, Katy planned to be a writer, and she received her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University with a scholarship for creative writing. She has always loved writing for work and updating her skills as styles and technology change.

We’ve heard your valuable feedback, and now you don’t have to hear us! Beginning May 4, 2021, the period between 8 and 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday morning of every month will be reserved for “Meditative Mornings,” a pause for quiet time in our gardens and on our trails. During this time, our working garden crew will abstain from using leaf blowers, mowers and other equipment so you can be sure to enjoy the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees.

Take advantage of half-price parking on the first Tuesday of every month and come out to the Arboretum to enjoy a Meditative Morning!

Flash Fiction Writing Group meets the 3rd Friday of each month and examines, explores and uses the elements and techniques of short fiction writing.

Kick-off football season + Labor Day weekend with the best tailgate party on Lake Hartwell on Aug 31st ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​🏈

Come watch the top games of the day on a 12′ LED screen + enjoy food trucks, drinks specials, vendors and more! Game day kicks off at 12 PM with the Tigers vs the Bulldogs – come rep your team, bring your tailgate gear (chairs/games), and start tailgate season with a bang 🧡❤️

🌮 Fresco Luna Pop-Up Taco Shop
🍧 Sunset Shaved Iced
🍤 J.R. Cash’s at Big Water Marina
🎵 Live music with Jonathan Ingram @ ~7 PM

Learn more at: https://bit.ly/ldw-tailgate-party-2024

Paid parking inside the gate • free parking outside of the gate • free shuttle at all parking

We’ve heard your valuable feedback, and now you don’t have to hear us! Beginning May 4, 2021, the period between 8 and 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday morning of every month will be reserved for “Meditative Mornings,” a pause for quiet time in our gardens and on our trails. During this time, our working garden crew will abstain from using leaf blowers, mowers and other equipment so you can be sure to enjoy the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees.

Take advantage of half-price parking on the first Tuesday of every month and come out to the Arboretum to enjoy a Meditative Morning!

**Join Us for a Labor Day Celebration at Craft Axe Throwing!**

📅 **Date:** Monday, September 4th, 2024
🕓 **Time:** 4:00 PM – 9:00 PM
📍 **Location:** Craft Axe Throwing

Celebrate Labor Day with an exciting evening of axe throwing, fun, and festivities! Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a first-timer, Craft Axe Throwing is the perfect place to unwind and enjoy the holiday. Bring your friends, family, and co-workers for a unique and thrilling experience.

We look forward to seeing you there!

**Craft Axe Throwing Team**

We invite you to join our “Fair Pay Soirée” on Sept 18 at M. Judson Bookstore from 6:30-9:30pm to celebrate International Equal Pay Day! This event will include a cocktail hour, a discussion on pay equity, and live music. For tickets, head to https://www.scwren.org/events/fair-pay-soiree/

Let’s work together to close the gender pay gap and create a more equitable future for all!

Join us for a book-inspired wine tasting! We pair the qualities of each wine with a book that shares the same spirit. Your ticket to the tasting, apart from the tastes, includes your choice of one of the featured books. Bottles of the featured wines will be for sale at great prices, too. This event is a crowd favorite, serving as a great date, a perfect girls night out, or treat to yourself. Buy your ticket now and join us on September 18th at 7:30 pm!

*Refunds or transfers can only be accommodated 24 hours prior to the event.

Flash Fiction Writing Group meets the 3rd Friday of each month and examines, explores and uses the elements and techniques of short fiction writing.

Join us in the M. Judson Gallery for a haiku workshop with poet Miho Kinnas. The ticket includes the hour and a half intensive instruction and a copy of Kinnas’ latest poetry collection, Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias.

Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias is the third poetry collection by Miho Kinnas, including the poem anthologized in Best American Poetry 2023. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her unique, sophisticated voice keeps pushing the boundary of what brevity can accomplish. She writes about the state of being by interweaving love, books, travel, family, women and history.

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Miho Kinnas is a writer, translator, and poet living in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. She is the author of Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias, her third poetry collection. Her poems, prose, and translations have appeared in various anthologies and journals, including Best American Poetry 2023, Coast Lines (upcoming), Tokyo Poetry Journal, and American Review of Books. She leads poetry workshops at Writers.com, Pat Conroy Literary Center, and New York Writers’ Workshop, among other locations.

We’ve heard your valuable feedback, and now you don’t have to hear us! Beginning May 4, 2021, the period between 8 and 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday morning of every month will be reserved for “Meditative Mornings,” a pause for quiet time in our gardens and on our trails. During this time, our working garden crew will abstain from using leaf blowers, mowers and other equipment so you can be sure to enjoy the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees.

Take advantage of half-price parking on the first Tuesday of every month and come out to the Arboretum to enjoy a Meditative Morning!

Experience mouthwatering Southern baking—from humble home kitchens to innovative new Southern chefs. One of the world’s richest culinary traditions comes to life through this essential cookbook from bestselling author Anne Byrn. With 200 recipes from 14 states and more than 150 photos, Baking in the American South has the biscuits, cornbread, cakes, and rolls that will help you bake like a Southerner, even if you aren’t. Recipes can tell you volumes if you pay attention—the crops raised, languages spoken, family customs, old world flavors, and, often, religion. Did you know that where a mill was located affected the recipes handed down from that area? Or that baking and selling pound cakes directly impacted the Civil Rights Movement? These stories and recipes, developed from good times and bad, have been collected and perfected over years and are now accessible to us all. Anne’s expertise in assessing, modernizing, and developing well-written recipes makes this the definitive guide for bakers of all levels. From-scratch, Southern classic recipes include: Thomasville Cheese Biscuits Ouita Michel’s Sweet Potato Streusel Muffins Nina Cain’s Batty Cakes with Lacy Edges The Best Lemon Meringue Pie Georgia Gilmore’s Pound Cake This fascinating dive into the history of 14 Southern states—Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and more—features stories and beautifully photographed recipes from pre-Civil War times to today’s Southern kitchens. It’s about the places, the people, the products and the culture of the moment that influenced what people baked. It’s about African-American women and the monumental contributions they have made to the art of Southern baking, about home cooks and how they’ve kept traditions alive wherever they settle by baking family recipes each year for holidays and celebrations, and about the pastry chefs who have thoughtfully reimagined how the South bakes. Experience the recipes and the stories behind them that showcase the substantial contributions Southern baking has made to American baking at large. Food historians, bakers, foodies, and cookbook collectors from every corner of the country will want this cookbook in their collections.

ANNE BYRN is a New York Times bestselling food writer and author. She writes the weekly newsletter Between the Layers, one of the top 20 food and drink newsletters worldwide on Substack. She has authored several cookbooks. Her latest books are A New Take on Cake and Skillet Love, the latter exploring the history and modern uses for the cast-iron skillet. They followed American Cookie and American Cake, which NPR named one of the best cookbooks of 2016. The Cake Mix Doctor and sequels have more than 4 million copies in print, and USA Today called The Cake Mix Doctor the bestselling cookbook the year it debuted. Byrn’s career began as a food writer for The Atlanta Journal. Her food writing was named the Best Food Section by the Association of Food Journalists. She studied at La Varenne École de Cuisine in Paris and lived in England where she wrote about food and travel for a year. Anne is a contributor to Food52, Bon Appétit, and the Bitter Southerner. Byrn is a Nashville native and a fifth-generation Tennessean. For several years, she was the food writer for The Tennessean. Byrn has been featured in People magazine, The Washington Post, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Southern Living, Publishers Weekly, and many other publications. She has appeared on Good Morning America, Later Today, CNN, The Food Network, and QVC and has taught cooking classes across the country. She and her husband live in Nashville.

Drinks with author Kimberly Brock to celebrate her latest novel, The Fabled Earth! Your ticket includes entrance to the event, a copy of the book, and a signature cocktail (or mocktail).

Inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island, The Fabled Earth is a sweeping story of family lore and the power of finding your own voice as Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide with a changing world. 1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide; a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined. 1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend – and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost–someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.

Kimberly Brock is the award-winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The River Witch. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. She lives near Atlanta with her husband and three children.