FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[GREENVILLE, NC]
The first of the 2024 issues of the North Carolina Literary Review, NCLR Online Winter 2024, introduces the 2024 feature “North Carolina Disability Literature” with our 2023 Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize-winning essay “The Weight of Light” by writer and cover artist Laura Hope-Gill. Our second guest feature editor, Dr. Casey Kayser, writes in her introduction, “North Carolina is home to many writers and artists with disabilities, whose voices have often been marginalized or overlooked, and we hope that featuring Disability Literature plays a role in highlighting the great talent and diversity of the writers’ experiences.”
In addition to the words and paintings from Hope-Gill, the feature section includes “The Anchored Raft,” an essay by Elaine Neil Orr, and reviews of books by Ocracoke author Kelley Shinn, Raleigh author Kati Gardner, and the AAUW North Carolina Award for Young People’s Literature 2021 winning book by Halli Gomez.
Elsewhere in the issue is another Albright Prize contest essay: the honorable mention by Ashley Harris; Applewhite contest finalist poetry; literary news about honors NC Award for Literature recipient Marsha White Warren and NC Humanities Caldwell Award recipient Clyde Edgerton, both honored for their long service to letters and writers across the state; and over two dozen book reviews. The book reviews are what sparked the addition of a fourth issue, according to Editor Margaret Bauer. “As I worked with Assistant Editor Desiree Dighton’s students on designing over two dozen book reviews last fall, then pulled those together with the finalist poetry and creative nonfiction, plus other content, I realized I already had a hundred pages for the winter issue – with several pieces still out for design and more reviews coming in all the time. We would just have to add a Spring issue,” which will be released in April.
NCLR Online issues are open access to widely introduce new books by North Carolina writers and share the latest writing and literary news of the state. Access this issue via the NCLR website, and subscribe to NCLR for the 2024 print issue, with essays on and interviews with writers with disabilities and more winners of our 2023 contests.
Produced since 1992 at East Carolina University, the multiple award-winning North Carolina Literary Review has a mission 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 literary news stories. We complement the writing with the work of North Carolina artists and photographers.