Saturday Review: “Love and Death in North Carolina Poetry”: a review by Catherine Carter
Jessica Jacobs. Take Me With You, Wherever You’re Going 2019.
Wayne Johns. Antipsalm 2018.
Eric Tran. The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer 2020.
Friday from the Archives: “A Wanderer of the Earth and a Son of the Community: Place and the Question of Queers in the Rural Souths of Lee Smith and Randall Kenan” by Harry Thomas from NCLR 17 (2008).
“In an endnote contained within his The Queer Renaissance (1997), critic Robert McRuer says that “migration-to-the-big-city novels could compete against coming-out stories for the title of ‘Most Common Lesbian/Gay Genre.”
Announcing the winners of the inaugural Jaki Shelton Green Performance Poetry Competition!
Saturday Review: “People As Part, Community As Sum” a review by John Hanley
De’Shawn Charles Winslow. In West Mills. (2019)
Anna Jean Mayhew. Tomorrow’s Bread. (2019)
“… while In West Mills asks us to examine how a community can be a foundation for its inhabitants, Tomorrow’s Bread asks us what happens when that foundation is stripped away,”
Friday from the Archives: “into the vast unknown”? The Changing Ending of Paul Green’s The Lost Colony By E. Thomson Shields, Jr. from NCLR Issue 27 (2018)
It’s the unofficial start of summer, which means one of North Carolina’s most well-known stories and summer adventures is getting started for the season. The outdoor symphonic drama The Lost Colony has been important to several North Carolina industries over the years.
Saturday Review: “Spreading Awe: Childhood and Heritage in New Poetry” a review by Sarah Huener
Joseph Bathanti. The 13th Sunday after Pentecost. 2017.
Michael McFee. We Were Once Here. 2017.
“These are two poets with distinctive voices, voices that observe their youth, but which are also wiser than the past selves we meet within their pages.”
Friday from the Archives: “Wedding Belles” fiction by Melissa Hardy from NCLR Issue 12 (2003)
Clad in a flame azalea organdy leftover bridesmaid dress from her older sister’s wedding, Julia Snow (of the Chapel Hill Snows) is attending her college roommate Muffin’s wedding in Charlotte. Julia thought she, like Muffin, like her sisters, like many other women of her time, would have gotten an MRS degree along with her Music BA. As it turns out, she didn’t and is now pondering what, and who, her future holds.
Saturday Review: “Tallying the Cost of Addiction in Appalchia:” a review by Dale Neal
David Joy. When These Mountains Burn. 2020.
Meagan Lucas. Songbirds & Stray Dogs. 2019.
In a serendipitous event, both David Joy and Meagan Lucas, both writers living in the NC mountains, have new books out this year AND were reviewed together for their last books.
Friday from the Archives: “Make Believe with Utter Conviction: An Interview With Garth Risk Hallberg” by Brian Glover from NCLR Issue 24 (2017) “Brian Glover interviewed Hallberg during his novel book tour in 2015. Glover wrote, “By any measure, Garth Risk Hallberg’s novel City on Fire was one of the major literary events of 2015…”
“I have learned that the literature of North Carolina writers is rich and varied, providing us insight into not only individual experiences with illness and disability, but offering a larger perspective on the diverse experiences of people in the South.”