38
2019
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Features and Finalists Redux by Margaret D. Bauer, Editor Our online Flashbacks section grows longer every year, since we publish in this section reviews of books by and about writers who have appeared in our pages. And we are proud that so many of the state’s literary prize winners have shared their writing in NCLR. We are happy to share the news of their 2018 awards. Inevitably, a few of the finalists for the Applewhite Poetry Prize have had poems make it to the publication round of the competition in years past. We are pleased to find poets submitting year after year. And we are grateful to James Applewhite, who allows us to use his name for this prize, for sending us his new poems for our issues every year. Some of his NCLR poems have found their way into his new poetry collection, reviewed here along with the newest collection by his (and our) dear friend Betty Adcock. Note that A.R. Ammons, who sent poems for every issue published by founding editor Alex Albright, is also featured here, within a review of Robert West’s ambitious and already well-lauded two-volume collection of Ammons’s The Complete Poems. In Flashbacks, too, we include content that revisits past themes; for example, Miriam Herin’s 2018 Doris Betts Fiction Prize story hearkening back to our 2015 issue global theme, and Barbara Bennett’s essay examining the adaptation of Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish from book to film, as well as touching on the newer musical adaptation. This essay expands the content of our 2012 issue featuring North Carolina literature into film – for NCLR does claim Daniel Wallace as a North Carolina writer, even if Big Fish is set in his home state of Alabama. This author has called North Carolina home for many years now, and admirably serves the Old North State by educating new North Carolina writers at UNC Chapel Hill.
Several reviews of Appalachia-set novels also hearken back to one of our most popular issues: the 2010 issue featuring North Carolina Appalachian writers. One of the reasons that issue is so popular is its opening with a selection from The Land Breakers by John Ehle, followed by an essay on this inspiring North Carolina writer by his protegee-turned-friend, Terry Roberts. After John Ehle’s passing last spring, Terry sent me the lovely tribute to his mentor that you will find in this section. To honor this literary icon, whom, I will admit, I had not heard of before editing NCLR – and whose novels once read are unforgettable – I proposed to Terry and to Kevin Watson of Press 53 a new NCLR prize named for John Ehle, which will go to the author of the best content on a North Carolina writer whose work has been neglected by literary scholars of Southern literature. The first Ehle Prize, $250 donated by Press 53, will be awarded to the author of one of the essays forthcoming in the 2019 print issue, so be sure to subscribe to ensure that you have the opportunity to read about a writer you’ve likely not heard about or known much about before. n