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2021
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Welcoming New Writers and Making New Plans by Margaret D. Bauer, Editor To the writers reviewed in this section, welcome to NCLR. We hope to see more from you: submissions to our creative writing competitions, as well as more books to review. I know we are going to see more of Nathan Ballingrud: Jim Coby has interviewed him for the 2021 print issue. As always, we thank our reviewers, who provide the great service to NCLR. Over fifty books reviewed in this issue! Thanks go to long-time editorial board member Donna Kain, who teaches an editing and publishing class at ECU. With a summer teaching grant from the ECU Faculty Senate, she and I developed an assignment that gave the students in her class experience with formatting and layout as they helped to prepare many of this issue’s reviews for publication. I wonder if other professors might like to involve their students in NCLR. We are always in need of more book reviewers. Please send me recommendations of your best graduate students who might be interested in writing book reviews. And if you would like to incorporate a reviewing assignment into your writing or literature class, I would
be happy to visit virtually to talk with them about reviews and then to consider their reviews (of new North Carolina literature, of course) for NCLR. Due to the large number of reviews in the annual online issues for the past several years now, NCLR is working on an evolution to follow the release of our thirtieth print issue this year, similar to our evolution after the twentieth annual print issue, when we created NCLR Online. Our plan is to expand NCLR Online to two or perhaps even three issues a year. Stay tuned for more news about this development after the 2021 print issue’s summer appearance. We appreciate a gift from the Cold Mountain Fund with the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina and a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, which is providing support for these impending changes. And we welcome your gift toward the sustainability of this and other NCLR projects, which will require additional staff support for the additional work necessary to bring more NCLR to you. Please look for information about donating on the back cover of this issue. n