FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
With both an historic feature section and the first guest feature editor, the 2023 issue of the North Carolina Literary Review coming this summer will be one to celebrate. First ever guest feature editor Dr. Kirstin L. Squint (ECU) oversaw the collection and editing of work by and about “Native American Literature of North Carolina,” the year’s featured theme. Squint remarked about her work, “I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished. NCLR’s first special feature section devoted to Native American literature of North Carolina is excellent. It contains creative writing by Cherokee and Lumbee authors; scholarship about Cherokee, Lumbee, and Catawba work; and art by Cherokee, Lumbee, and
Catawba artists.”
The feature section includes creative nonfiction by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) and poetry by Mary Leauna Christensen (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) and Tonya Holy Elk (Oglala Lakota/Lumbee descent), as well as painting, photography, sculpture, and pottery by Cherokee, Lumbee, and Catawba artists.
The cover is a paper weaving, a new form created by Eastern Band and Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rhiannon Skye Tafoya, based on the traditional Cherokee river cane basket. The special feature section also includes literary criticism and an interview by scholars of Native American and Southern literature. These pieces discuss work by Cherokee writers Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle and Gladys Cardiff. There is an interview with author Blake Hausman. Other pieces spotlight Lumbee writers Brittany D. Hunt, Leslie Locklear, Christina Pacheco, Barbara Braveboy-Locklear, Anetra L. Dial, Becky Goins, and Wendy Moore-Cummings; and the eighteenth-century testimonial of Teresa Martín, a mostly likely Catawba woman.
The Flashbacks and North Carolina Miscellany sections of this issue include an essay by Michael Parker, another interview (with Phillip Lewis about his debut novel The Barrowfields) and more literary criticism (on John Darnielle’s fiction), as well as the 2022 winners and other honorees of the Doris Betts Fiction Prize (1st place, Erin Miller Reid, and 2nd place, Theresa Dowell Blackinton), Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize (winner Audrey Jennifer Smith), and James Applewhite Poetry Prize contests (1st place and honorable mention poems by Barbara Campbell and second place by Nancy Swanson). “These sections allow us to revisit past topics
and publish work by and about a variety of writers with connections to North Carolina,” Editor Margaret Bauer says.
The 2023 print issue is available with a subscription to NCLR, or it can be ordered from UNC Press or through your local independent bookstore. For more information visit the NCLR website.
Produced since 1992 at East Carolina University, the North Carolina Literary Review has won numerous awards and citations. The mission of NCLR is to preserve and promote North Carolina’s rich literary culture. NCLR introduces new and emerging writers; reintroduces forgotten authors; showcases work in literary criticism, interviews, book reviews, fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry; and reports on the state’s literary news.