Asheville Harry Potter Alliance

The name is confusing to some, if not most. Harry Potter Alliance? “What do you do, sit around and talk about Harry Potter all the time?” Well…no. Not really. Actually, not much at all.

Let me explain.

The Harry Potter Alliance is

“a coalition of fandom leaders and members who feel passionate about the power of story to inspire and affect social change. Just as Harry and his friends fought the Dark Arts in JK Rowling’s fictional universe, we strive to destroy real-world horcruxes like inequality, illiteracy, and human rights violations.”

That’s directly from the main Harry Potter Alliance website (thehpalliance.org). So basically, we fight to decrease worldsuck.

What does that mean for Asheville?

I’m glad you asked.

We know that Asheville is by far one of the coolest cities in the world. I mean, we’re featured almost every week in a national publication or on national television (thanks, Caleb!). But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have problems. Literacy and homelessness are two of those problems.

That’s where we, the Asheville Harry Potter Alliance, pop in.

We just finished a literacy campaign called Accio Books, where we collect gently used books to send to those in need. Over half the books we collected were sent to the POP Project here in Asheville (http://thepopproject.org). The rest of the books are going to Detroit, Michigan, to a community center. Our next project is focusing on helping the homeless in the area.

But we’re not all super-serious about saving the world. We have tons of fun, too!

We’re hosting a Harry Potter trivia night at Malaprop’s next Tuesday, June 3, at 7 pm. We also have a table at GeekOut Saturday, June 7, and Sunday, June 8. If you want more information, check us out on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AshevilleHPA), Twitter (@AshevilleHPA), and Tumblr (ashevillehpa.tumblr.com).