North Carolina Miscellany
in first person, these images connect the reader with the speaker, who is not particularly likable, and take us right to the heart of the matter, to the human noise that Carver seems to be talking about. Does Cawood also subscribe to this notion that death or pain and love are interconnected? Perhaps Mig, one of the two main characters in a trio of connected stories in A Small Thing to Want, summarizes Cawood’s
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together because we are human, and we cannot separate them. These authors tell stories that seem to say we cannot have love without pain, and love, according to a Stanford University study in 2010, actually mitigates pain like opioid-analgesics.2 Like an addiction, we’re stuck in the pain-love-pain cycle. Morrison’s characters sometimes kill for love; Cawood’s characters survive love, and this is part of our human noise. n
collection best in “Happy” when he tells his wife: “love isn’t about happiness, Suzette. . . . It’s about survival” (126). That is what many of Cawood’s characters are doing: they are just trying to survive love. While as children we learn that love is the absence of hate, darkness is the absence of light, and goodness is the absence of evil, perhaps the reality is more that hate and love are knitted
SHULY XÓCHITL CAWOOD’s MFA in creative writing is from Queens University of Charlotte, and Charlotte, NC, does show up in some of the stories in this collection. Her other books are The Going and Goodbye: A Memoir (Platypus Press, 2017), 52 Things I Wish I Could Have Told Myself When I Was 17 (Cimarron Books, 2018), and a poetry collection, Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning (Mercer University Press, 2021). She has been published in Brevity, The Rumpus, and Cider Press Review. She also earned an MA in journalism from Ohio State University, and she writes columns for Johnson City Press and The News & Neighbor and teaches memoir writing.
N C L R ONLINE
2
Jarred Younger, Arthur Aron, Sara Parke, Neil Chatterjee, and Sean Mackey, “Viewing Pictures of a Romantic Partner Reduces Experimental Pain: Involvement of Neural Reward Systems,” PLOS ONE 13 Oct. 2010: web.
TRIAD STAGE OF GREENSBORO RECEIVES HARDEE RIVES AWARD The 2020 Hardee Rives Award for Dramatic Arts was awarded to Triad Stage. Triad Stage began with the dream of a regional theatre serving the communities of the Triad. Their core values include “audacious artistry, creative collaboration, curious learning, Southern voice, and welcoming community.” Triad Stage was named “One of the Best Regional Theaters in America” by New York’s Drama League and “one of the top ten most promising theatres in the country” by the founder of the Tony Awards, The American Theatre Wing. They are also in partnership with the UNC Greensboro COURTESY OF TRIAD STAGE
Theatre and UNC School of the Arts in a commitment to serve “as a bridge between educational and professional theater.”1 After forming their artistic relationship at the Yale School of Drama, Preston Lane and Rich Whittington co-founded Triad Stage in 1999, and three years later, after major renovations to the former Montgomery Ward building, they held their grand opening at the newly named Pyrle Theatre with the production of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer. Triad Stage has now produced more than seventy-five productions and sold more than 350,000 tickets. The 3,200plus Seasonal Passholders and the four hundred-plus annual donors allow funding for constant improvements, renovations, and expansions for Pyrle Theatre. The Hardee Rives Award for Dramatic Arts has been given by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association since 2009 “in recognition of excellent, exemplary work in and significant contribution and service to the dramatic arts in North Carolina.”2 Recipients have included individuals such as Bo Thorpe, William Ivey Long, and Terrence Mann and institutions such as the National Black Theatre Festival and the Roanoke Island Historical Association, among other distinguished recipients. n
ABOVE Publicity photograph for Triad Stage’s 2019 production
of White Lightening, by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, about NASCAR and moonshine
1
Qtd. from the Triad Stage website.
2
Qtd. from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources website. Hear the group’s acceptance remarks here.