NCLR Online Spring 2026

featuring Military Writing in North Carolina

cover art by Reuben Jarvis Mabry

Spotlighting Military Writing

section introduction by Anna Froula, Guest Feature Editor

“April 2026. We are at war again. . . . What kind of stories and art will emerge from this new war in Iran? How many new war memorials must we go on to build? How much memorialization will it take us as a nation, as a species, to grasp how wars affect us all to varying degrees?”

Map Men
a poem by Walter Bennett
art by Reuben Jarvis Mabry

From the Montvale Veterans Home: The Now and the Then
a poem by Louis Girón

Dog Days Ft Leonard Wood, August, ’53
a poem by Joseph Shea
art by Jacob Joubert

Always Ready, Always There: Musings of a Citizen Soldier
a review by Jon Kesler
Paul Crenshaw, This We’ll Defend, A Noncombat Veteran on
War and its Aftermath

Decorated
creative nonfiction by Michael Ramos
art by Amy Louise Brown

Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues

Award-Winning Writers and Books Abound in North Carolina

section introduction by Margaret D. Bauer, Editor

“The 1996 “cat” issue is before my time, and the idea of it does raise eyebrows (“You published a cat issue?) ”Yes,
we did. And it has some great stuff in it, people discover. It is dedicated to and was inspired by one of Founding Editor Alex Albright’s beloved editors, Bertie Fearing.

“Raleigh Jim Clark” Awarded the Long Leaf Pine
by Rebecca Godwin

History, Memoir, and Novel
a review by E. Thomson Sheilds, Jr.
Lynn Domina, Approaches to Teaching
Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Story of a Place
a review by Evan Peter Smith
Bland Simpson, Clover Garden,
A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir

Learning to Listen in Western North Carolina
a review by Jessica Cory
Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Creature
John Thomas York, The Charge

Gulledge’s Love Letter
a review by Shelby Hans
Jim Gulledge, Green Forest, Red Earth, Blue Sea

First in Flight: The Woman Behind the Wright Brothers
a review by Rebecca Godwin
Tracey Enerson Wood, Katharine, the Wright Sister

From Peaks to Pirates: Mysteries of North Carolina
a review by Benjamin Bradley
Carol Ann Collins, The Seafarer’s Secret
Archer Sullivan, The Witch’s Orchard

Lifting the Veil: The Invisible World of Mental Health Care
a review by Donna Summerlin
Hannah Thurman, Mercy Hill

Coming of Age and Finding Faith
a review by Jon Kesler
Austin Allran, The Legend of The Isle of Cats

“A Voice Out Here in the Chaos”
a review by Barbara Bennett
Jason Mott, People Like Us

Between Legacy and Liberation
a review by Abby Trzepacz
Tracy Deonn, Oathbound

Journey Through Forgetful Skies and Crash Landings:
Near-Future Young Adult Literature
a review by Alyssa Froemel
Beth Revis, Full Speed to a Crash Landing
Lauren Yero, Under This Forgetful Sky

Stories of Self-Acceptance
a review by Mark I. West
Vanessa Brantley-Newton, Becoming Vanessa
Maya Myers, Not Perfect

North Carolina Miscellany

Raising the Bar

section introduction by Margaret D. Bauer, Editor

“This is what fine writers do, have done, for centuries, memorializing their heroes in words.”

The Willis Whichard I Knew
by Martin Brinkley

Fruit of the Vine: Poems to Savor and Sustain
a review by Michael Beadle
Claudia Emerson, ungrafted

Ode to a Blackbird
a poem by Martin Settle
art by Layton Hower

The Children, Like Birds
a short story by Zachariah Claypole White
art by George Scott

A Family by Any Other Name
a review by Sheryl Cornett
Sharon Kurtzman, The Lost Baker of Vienna

Ghazal for the Jinn
a poem by Ilari Pass
art by Kulsum Tasnif

History is in Your Veins: Etaf Rum Examines Healing from Generational Trauma
a review by Olivia Cash
Etaf Rum, Evil Eye

At Midnight
a poem by Asma Abike
art by Beverly McIver

Inheriting Emotional Repression: Love, Loss, and Legacy
a review by Sterling Neill
Terah Shelton Harris, Long After We Are Gone

After Palm Sunday
a poem by Eric Thompson
art by Antoine Williams

The Summer I Left
a poem and photograph by Veronica Schorr

Cursed throughout Time
a review by Kenly Corya
Adrienne Young, The Unmaking of June Farrow

In Praise of Time
a poem by Richard Allen Tayler
art by Horace Farlowe

Telling Stories to Live
a review by Terry Roberts
Gary Carden, Stories I Lived to Tell
Christopher Lee Nelson, Where You Are From

The Power of Redemption in Poetry
a review by Grace C. Ocasio
Gail Peck, In the Shadow of Beauty

A Writer’s Toolkit
a review by Sayantani Dasgupta
Nora Shalaway Carpenter, Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on
Writing, Resilience, & the Creative Life