NCLR 2025

Featuring North Carolina LGBTQ+ Literature

cover art by Tim Tate;
cover collage design by Dana Ezzell

Read the NCLR 2025 Press Release [PDF]–pending

BUY THE 2024 ISSUE

Pushcart Nominations
TBA

Imagining a Myriad of Possibilities

section introduction by Dwight Tanner, Guest Feature Editor [PDF] pending

“[E]ngagement with an expansive approach to storytelling
. . . seems inextricable from a certain queer ethos of innovatively imagining and dreaming (pointedly as a collaborative, shared process) other possibilities and possible futures.”

“Key Travelers” of the “Rustic Scene”: Carl Wittman and Allan Troxler
an essay by Erick Solomon

Mavericks and Eccentrics Between the Cracks:
On the Jargon Society’s Hidden Histories
an interview with Andrew Martrich
by J. Gordon Faylor

We Never Asked for This
a short story by Jim Grimsley
photography by Steed Taylor

How to Make a Sandwich
a Randall Kenan remembrance by Sharon P. Holland
art by Susan Paulsen

To Be Laid Bare: Grief and Vulnerability in Randall
Kenan’s “I Thought I Heard the Shuffle of Angels’ Feet”
by Fredrick Cherry, Jr.
art by Michael C. Morgan

“I feel lucky to be in North Carolina”: An Interview with Gabrielle Calvocaressi
by Jamie Cantrell
photography by Shane Booth

Back to the Future: Carter Sickels and the Heavy Lift of Appalachian AIDS Fiction
by Anna Creadick
art by Tim Tate

“A World So Fearful of Difference”: Queer Characters in the Novels of De’Shawn Charles Winslow
an interview by Travis Roundtree
art by Willie Little

“The Crucible of Our Becoming”: An Interview with Jessica Jacobs
by Catherine Carter

The Guest Star
Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize essay by Ashlen Renner
photography by David Quattlebaum

Revisits and Revelations

section introduction by Margaret D. Bauer, Editor [PDF] pending

“There’s not a sentence [Ben Fountain] has written that doesn’t have its own reason for being; that doesn’t have character; no sentence you wouldn’t want to take home to introduce to your family. Mom, Dad, I want you to meet someone. It’s a sentence by Ben Fountain. And I want to marry it.).”—Daniel Wallace, on the occasion of the Thomas Wolfe Prize lecture

The North Carolina that Made Me
Thomas Wolfe Lecture by Ben Fountain
introduced by Daniel Wallace

The Real Thing: Wise Cracker Childhood
in Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster
the 2025 John Ehle Prize essay by Katherine Henninger

Dinosaurs and Rip Van Winkle at 70
two poems by Charles Murray
art by Carolyn DeMeritt

I – The Mountain
creative nonfiction by Loss Pequeño Glazier
photography by Francis Oliva Leon

Suzanne is in Pottery Class
a short story by Leslie Pietrzyk
art by Natalie Boorman, Colleen Semelka, and Fannie Hillsmith

Executive Order to Purge Federal Workers
of the Notion of Justice
a poem by Joanne Durham

Award-Winning Writing,
Rewarding Art

section introduction by Margaret D. Bauer, Editor [PDF] pending

“Content might call to [Art Editor Diane Rodman’s] mind the art of someone we’ve featured before, but more often she introduces new artists to our pages, and we are grateful for all of her work. We are also grateful to the artists for so generously sharing their work.”