FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[GREENVILLE, NC]
The second of the quarterly issues of the North Carolina Literary Review, NCLR Online Spring 2025, continues this year’s special feature “LGBTQ+ Literature of North Carolina.” In his introduction, Guest Feature Editor Dwight Tanner speaks on reacquainting himself with “the many established authors in this category while also coming to discover and appreciate countless more.” This issue’s “collection of creative writings, artwork, and book reviews . . . provides a great opportunity to do just that.”
The Feature section opens with Jim Grimsley’s short story “There’s Another Moment After This One,” featuring art by the issue’s cover artist, Willie Little. Amber Flora Thomas’s poem, “Figure in a Landscape,” follows. The section also includes four reviews: Catherine Carter reviews Jessica Jacobs’s poetry collection, unalone; Onyx Bradley reviews Eric Tran’s poetry collection, Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke; Robert M. West reviews Jeffery Beam’s poetry collection, Verdant, and Jennifer McGaha reviews Stephanie Clare Smith’s memoir, Everywhere the Undrowned.
NCLR Editor, Margaret Bauer, introduces the Flashbacks section with congratulations to Sally Greene for her 2025 Paul Green Prize-winning essay “The Generative Legacy of Paul Green” and a thank you to the Paul Green Foundation for their continued support encouraging submissions about Green. Bauer goes on to talk about the many contributors to this section: seven poems from the 2024 James Applewhite Prize contest, book reviews of authors who have previously written for NCLR including Paul Crenshaw, Jennifer McGaha, Dale Neal and Allan Wolf, or who have been featured writers, like Michelle Tracey Berger. Others review books of various past feature topics, including fantasy, young adult and children’s literature, regional, and more.
This issue’s North Carolina Miscellany section features a remembrance by Marjorie Hudson of Kevin “Mc” McIlvoy and his work. This section also includes book reviews by Becca Hannigan, who is new to NCLR pages, and Shelby Hans and Wendy Tilley, who are former editorial assistants in the spring of 2024, bringing the total to 21 books reviewed in this issue. 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. Artwork used by exclusively North Carolina artists.
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