BettyJoyce Nash wins the 2026 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize with her essay “Absent without Leave.” Final Judge Tracy Crow writes about her selection, “the voice and writing of ‘Absent Without Leave’ are captivating, yearning, vulnerable, and frankly quite energetic…. I kept eagerly reading on, page after page.” Nash currently lives in Charlottesville, VA, and teaches at WriterHouse, a literary arts organization. After receiving her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, NC, she taught writing at the University of Richmond, community writing centers, and at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Crow continued about the winning essay, “Readers might wish they’d taken a deep breath before diving into this energetic coming-of-age whirlpool that centers around a narrator’s desperate yearning to make sense of a nonsensical period in American history and its impact on the life and death of her first crush. Swirling throughout this memoir’s segmented structure are deeply unresolved questions about unpopular foreign wars, heartbreaking killings of beloved icons, fights for and against desegregation, a moon landing, Woodstock, and of course that first crush—the charismatic class-president-turned-draft-dodger who, after a psychotic meltdown, dies alone in prison.”
Nash is also the author of a novel, Everybody Here is Kin (Madville Publishing, 2023) and co-edited Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, literary gun stories that probe Americans’ complicated relationship to firearms (University of New Mexico Press, 2017). Her writing has been recognized with fellowships from MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, and the Tyron Guthrie Center in Ireland. She grew up in South Carolina, and moved to Chicago, where she worked as a ceramic artist; she later earned an MSJ, with distinction, from Northwestern (Medill Journalism), and worked at the Hendersonville Times-News and the Greensboro News & Record.
This year’s runner-up is Emily Louise Smith, for her essay “The Imagined House.” Crow calls this piece “a sophisticated blend of memoir and essay with a narrator determined to define her own life and limitations, whether as a single homebuyer or as a single parent by choice, because, ‘What you build in your mind is yours.’” Smith is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Department at UNC Wilmington, where she directs The Publishing Lab, Lookout Books Press, and the Ecotone journal. She has been awarded fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hambidge, and the Hub City Writers Project. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Boulevard, Gravy, Southern Review, Notes to New Mothers (W. W. Norton), and Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century (Milkweed), among other publications.
Crow also selected an Honorable Mention essay, “Effects,” by Jeffrey-Michael Kane, formerly of Mooresville, NC. Crow remarked of this essay: “In just 1,170 words and opening with ‘“’My mother is in a box at my brother’s house,’”’ we’re pulled into the narrator’s poetic revelations that his mother— ‘who believed in release—in being used up, in leaving nothing to manage’—has become in death what she hated most, ‘personal effects.’” Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It, a nonfiction work on cognitive patterning and inclusion in the workplace. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and sons.
The other finalists for this year are “Bright Morning Stars” by Susan Schmidt, “Brown Mule, White Mule” by Becky Gould Gibson, “A Call for Home” by Emily Carter, “Cathartidae” by Trace Ramsey, “Keeper of the Flame” by LeeAnna Lawrence, “Labor of Love” by Janice Arrowood Jennings, and “Snow No More: An Elegy” by Michael Thomas Gaffney.
We are grateful to final judge Tracy Crow, the CEO of MilSpeak Foundation, Inc., where she has built a community of veterans and service members who are dedicated to supporting the creative endeavors of the military community. She lives with her husband in central North Carolina. Crow is the author of Cooper’s Hawk: The Remembering; the popular history, It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan with co-author Jerri Bell; the award-winning memoir, Eyes Right: Confessions from a Woman Marine; and other books and stories. Read an interview with her in the forthcoming 2026 print issue featuring “Military Writing in North Carolina.” Find subscription information on the website at https://nclr.ecu.edu/subscriptions/.
Since its start 35 years ago, NCLR has been a venue for strong creative nonfiction. The Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize was created in 2015 to honor NCLR’s founding editor. The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association funds this contest. In addition to a monetary prize for the author and publication in NCLR, the winning essay is nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in the annual print issue. The other honorees will also be published and receive honoraria. The finalists are currently under further review for publication consideration.
Produced since 1992 at East Carolina University, North Carolina Literary Review has the 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 the state’s literary news. The featured artwork is by exclusively North Carolina artists. NCLR’s award-winning journal is published by the University of North Carolina Press and is supported by ECU, North Carolina Arts Council, the North Carolina Literary & Historical Association, and the Friends of NCLR.
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