FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[GREENVILLE, NC]
With the Fall issue of the North Carolina Literary Review, Editor Margaret Bauer announces they have published reviews of 69 books in 2025, over twenty in the Fall issue alone. “I call that fulfilling our mission to promote North Carolina writers,” Bauer proclaims. Writers and literary scholars taking time to write book reviews reflect the generosity of the North Carolina literary community. In this issue, for example, Bridget Bell reviews two poetry collections, and her own debut collection is also reviewed. And Michael Beadle, who has a poem in the issue, also authored a book review.
In his introduction to the issue’s feature section on LGBTQ+ Literature of North Carolina, Guest Feature Editor Dwight Tanner stresses, “[C]elebrating and engaging with rich, varied stories about queer experiences and perspectives is, now more than ever, truly critical.” Opening the feature section is Randall Kenan’s short story “The Foundations of the Earth,” originally published in his acclaimed collection, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, included in this issue with permission of the late author’s publisher and with art by the issue’s cover artist Ashlon T. Crawley. In an introduction to this story of a Black woman mourning her grandson, whom she discovered was gay after his untimely passing, Bauer notes, “I never tire of rereading it in preparation for discussing it with a new set of students.” In a similar vein, Tanner reviews a recent reprint of Jim Grimsley’s novel Dream Boy, which centers around a gay teenager finding comfort from an abusive father in the arms of his first love. The feature section includes reviews of several other new books.
Other content in the issue reports on NCLR’s and Clyde Edgerton’s most recent honor from the North Carolina Writers Conference; the North Carolina Writers’ Network’s fortieth anniversary; and the third Jaki Shelton Green Performance Poetry Prize contest results, with links to the performances. The winning poem of the premier Barrax/Bayes Poetry Prize for poetry by a member of the US Armed Forces: “Salty Son” by Hunter Mendenhall is included in the issue, as well as other NCLR contests’ finalists.
NCLR Online issues are open access. Find the full table of contents of this issue and, upon its release, a link to the issue here.
Produced since 1992 at East Carolina University, and published by the University of North Carolina Press, 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, and much of the content of issues is complemented with fine art by North Carolina visual artists.
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