The 2027 feature of the North Carolina Literary Review is “Southern Gothic in North Carolina Literature.” Guest editor for the year’s special feature section is Barbara Bennett, a Professor of English at North Carolina State University. Submit relevant essays on and interviews with North Carolina writers by August 31, 2026.
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic literature. Along with the characteristics of Gothic literature, Southern Gothic includes deeply flawed, eccentric, or disturbing characters and decaying settings such as old plantation homes – but also includes poverty, alienation, crime, and violence. While Gothic literature was often written solely for the sake of suspense, Southern Gothic often explores social issues and the cultural character of the American South, making a statement about race, class, or gender.
Bennett is hoping to receive articles about and interviews with authors from the sub-genre of the “New Black Gothic.” While New Black Gothic can also include the abnormal and supernatural, the overall message of the work concerns the exploitative and violent ways white supremacy has injured the black body through police violence, drugs, minimum sentencing, and the New Jim Crow. Examples include the film Get Out, Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, and Childish Gambino’s music video “This is America.” In North Carolina, we see the New Black Gothic in Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, among others.
Early submissions and proposals are desired! Direct queries and proposals for the special feature section to the guest editor at barbara_bennett@ncsu.edu. Find formatting information and online submission instructions on the NCLR website submissions page.
Barbara Bennett is a Professor of English at NC State University. Her books include Comic Vision, Female Voices (Louisiana State University Press, 1998), Understanding Jill McCorkle (University of South Carolina Press, 2000), Soul of a Lion (National Geographic Books, 2010), and Smoke Signals from Samarcand: The 1931 Reform School Fire and its Aftermath (University of South Carolina Press, 2018). For NCLR, she has written an essay on Jill McCorkle’s Ferris Beach in 2006, interviewed McCorkle and Lee Smith in 2016, written an essay on Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish in NCLR Online 2019, and a creative nonfiction essay in 2022. She also reviews regularly for NCLR.
Creative writing is submitted during each genre’s reading period during 2026. Poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction selected for publication that is related to the theme will be published in the special feature section, but the general creative writing contests are open topic.
