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Devra Thomas

Kesler reviews Gutierrez

Saturday Review: “A Port of Despair” a review by Jon Kesler of Michael Keenan Gutierrez’s The Swill (2022)
Gutierrez’s The Swill “captures the gritty feel of a place and point in time.”

Wolf Wins Betts Prize Twice

Friday from the Archives: “Distance” the 2007 Doris Betts Fiction Prize Winner by Thomas Wolf from NCLR Issue 17 (2008) plus “Boundaries” from 2012.

Colley reviews Smith

Saturday Review: “Lee Smith Goes To Key West” a review by Sharon E. Colley of Silver Alert (2023) by Lee Smith.

Glory and Trouble: Hughes in Chapel Hill

Friday from the Archives: “A Week or 3 Days in Chapel Hill: Faulkner, Contempo, and Their Contemporaries” by Jim Vickers from NCLR Issue 1 (1992)

In honor of the upcoming presentation “Langston Hughes 1931 Visit to Chapel Hill” at the Chapel Hill Library and sponsored by Carolina Public Humanities, we are sharing this week what was written about that very visit in our first issue from 1992.

Broadening Representation in High School Lit

Teaching Tuesdays: “Reading Jill McCorkle’s Ferris Beach” by Barbara Bennett, from NCLR Issue 15 (2006)
In her college courses where she teaches future teachers, Bennett looks for new material to add to the bibliography of traditionally-used literature in high schools.

Goad reviews Hedge Coke

Saturday Review: “A History of Violence, a History of Beauty” a review by Jill Goad of
Look at This Blue: A Poem. by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (2022)
Goad highlights the book’s emphasis on portraying California as a brutal place of decay and extinction, while subtly refusing to give up hope.