The Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) announced the North Carolina Literary Review (NCLR) is the winner of the 2014 Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement at the Modern Language Association conference in Vancouver on January 8. This is the journal’s fifth award from this allied organization of the Modern Language Association. CELJ’s membership includes more than 450 editors of scholarly journals.

According to the CELJ award guidelines, the Phoenix Award is given to a journal that has “launched an overall effort of revitalization or transformation within the previous 3 years.” NCLR Editor Margaret Bauer explains that she submitted to this category to call attention to NCLR’s expansion in 2012 to add a second issue each year, an open-access electronic issue titled NCLR Online. Book reviews are now published in these issues, she reports, “to reach as broad an audience as possible, our mission being to promote North Carolina writers.”

One of the CELJ judges said of NCLR, “What’s most impressive about the recent changes is . . . using online publishing to increase dissemination and take advantage of various digital affordances, while also preserving the gorgeous printed volume.” Another of the competition’s judges praised NCLR’s “immediate accessibility to a general audience with a high level of substantive writing.” This judge also remarked upon the appearance of the journal: “A particular appealing aspect of the journal is the enlargement of the verbal texts through photographic illustrations that are placed appropriately with the fictional works, the poems, and the interviews.” Bauer credits NCLR Art Editor Diane Rodman for the quality of the art featured inside and Art Director Dana Ezzell Gay and the other graphic designers for the beautiful layout of the issues.

The additional online issues also allow the editors to publish more of the finalists in the poetry and fiction competitions that the journal manages. Many of these finalists are new writers, according to Bauer, and they are therefore introduced to an even larger audience than the print issues reach. “One of my missions as editor has always been to give new writers a chance, even in ‘the writingest state.’” Using this descriptor, coined by the late Doris Betts, Bauer points out that with the number of established, talented writers in North Carolina, it would be easy to fill every issue without taking a chance on new talent. “But I enjoy reading and meeting new writers as much as I have enjoyed the opportunity to develop relationships with many of North Carolina’s literary stars.”

NCLR is published by East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, and by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. The newest issue of NCLR Online will be available in late January. The print issues are published in July. Find subscription information on NCLR’s website (www.nclr.ecu.edu), and see for yourself that, as one of CELJ’s judges put it, “it is a pleasure to walk through these pages, which keep the interest of the reader alive.”

Previous CELJ Awards:

• 2010 Best Journal Design
• 2007 Parnassus Award For Significant Editorial Achievement
• 1999 Best Journal Design
• 1992 Best New Journal