Our Staff – North Carolina Literary Review

Editor

Margaret D. Bauer has been editing NCLR since 1997. She is the Rives Chair of Southern Literature in the Department of English and a Distinguished Professor of Harriot College of Arts and Science at ECU. She was named one of the ten ECU Women of Distinction in 2007, and that same year received the Parnassus Award for Significant Editorial Achievement from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. In 2017, Governor Roy Cooper presented her with the North Carolina Award for Literature, and in 2018, North Carolina Humanities bestowed its highest honor upon her, the John Tyler Caldwell Award in the Humanities. Read an interview with the editor published in NCLR‘s 25th anniversary issues.

Art Director

Dana Ezzell is a Professor and Director of Graphic Design in Meredith College’s Department of Art. She worked with NCLR‘s original Art Director when she was an undergraduate, then went on to earn her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She resumed designing for NCLR in 1999 and has been NCLR‘s Art Director since 2009. Watch a presentation by Art Director Dana Ezzell Lovelace about designing NCLR.

Digital Editor

Devra Thomas handles digital communications and online content strategy for NCLR. She is also researching and writing The Stage is Open: The Triangle Theater Community from 1990-2015ish. She published the blog Color of Fayetteville, including two print issues thanks to a grant from the Arts Council of Fayetteville. She’s managed theaters across the state including Carteret Community Theatre, Cape Fear Regional, Common Ground, and Deep Dish. She holds a Masters of Arts Administration from Goucher College and a BA in Communications and Publishing from Guilford College.

Book Review Editor

Kristi Southern has been managing NCLR‘s book reviews since spring 2024 when she interned with NCLR as part of her MBA program. She has a BA and an MA from the ECU English Department, and then, she taught for English composition here for several years, during which time she served as our Submissions Manager. After co-owning a restaurant in downtown Greenville, Kristi returned to ECU for an MBA with the plan to put her business sense into nonprofit work.

Art Editor

Diane Rodman has been selecting the fine art for NCLR since 2007. She is retired from the ECU Department of English, where she taught for many years, but she continues to work with NCLR. In addition to finding art to complement the creative writing to be published, Diane copy edits and advises on numerous other matters.

Senior Associate Editor

Christy Alexander Hallberg worked on the NCLR staff with the original editor when she was a graduate student at ECU. She is a Teaching Professor in the English Department at ECU. Her debut novel, Searching for Jimmy Page, published in 2021, has been reviewed widely, received several awards, including the 2021 American Writing Awards for Best New Fiction and Fiction General. A frequent guest on others’ podcasts, Christy hosts Rock Is Lit, a podcast focused on “rock novels.” She has published fiction and nonfiction in a variety of literary magazines. Read her extensive interviews with North Carolina writers in NCLR.

Fiction Editor

Rebecca Bernard joined the ECU English Department in fall 2024. Her debut collection of stories, Our Sister Who Will Not Die, won the 2021 Non/Fiction prize from The Journal and was published by Ohio State’s Mad Creek Books in August 2022. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, Cincinnati Review, Wigleaf, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Fiction from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Vanderbilt University. Her work received notable mention in the Best American Short Stories of 2018.

Poetry Editor

Amber Flora Thomas, an Associate Professor in the English Department at ECU, is the author of three collections of poetry, including Eye of Water, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. A recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, the Richard Peterson Prize, and the Ann Stanford Prize, her poetry has appeared in Tin House, The New England Review, Callaloo, Orion Magazine, and Alaska Quarterly Review, as well as Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, and numerous other journals and anthologies. Thomas is a Cave Canem fellow and faculty member. She regularly teaches at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Sewanee Writers Conference. She earned an MFA at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. She was born and raised in northern California.