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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W COURTESY OF NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
FOUR NORTH CAROLINA POETS HONORED From the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame to the North Carolina Award for Literature, four beloved bards have received high honors in 2016 COURTESY OF NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) was posthumously selected as one of three 2016 inductees into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. Sandburg was a native of Galesburg, IL, before moving to Flat Rock, NC, in 1945.
ABOVE The Carl Sandburg House, Flat Rock, NC ABOVE TOP The study in the Sandburg House
Two of his poetry collections, Corn Huskers (1918) and The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (1950) as well as his biography, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939), received Pulitzer Prizes. Including his Pulitzer-winning collection, he published over a dozen books of poetry; and, in 1952, he received the Robert Frost medal, awarded to poets for a lifetime of prominent service in the field of poetry. Sandburg was a war veteran and an advocate of civil rights, and he is regarded to this day as one of the major literary voices of his time. His former home in Flat Rock is now maintained as the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site, which features tours, a bookstore, and a three-week writer’s retreat to help commemorate the life and literature of Carl Sandburg. North Carolina native Shelby Stephenson’s 2016 book, Elegies for Small Game, published by Press 53 of Winston-Salem has been awarded the Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry. Stephenson received his BA from UNC Chapel Hill where he studied law, then went on to earn his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He was an English professor at UNC Pembroke from 1978 until he retired in 2010, during which time he served as editor of Pembroke Magazine. In 2014, he was