30
2021
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
NEXT TO GODLINESS BY HONORABLE MENTION, 2020 DORIS BETTS FICTION PRIZE
ART BY PATRICIA STEELE RAIBLE
ROSE HIMBER HOWSE “WE’RE GOING TO BE A FAMILY,” SAID BLAKE .
ROSE HIMBER HOWSE is a queer writer from Asheville and a recent graduate of the MFA program at UNC Greensboro, where she served as Fiction Editor of The Greensboro Review. She has been awarded numerous fellowships and residencies. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Carolina Quarterly, Sonora Review, and elsewhere.
He had this way of always turning up behind you. I whipped around and glanced from him to Wanda – my mother. She’d gained some weight, and it looked good. Her arm was stretched
out, fingers spread like the twig hands of a snowman. She wiggled them, and the ring caught the light, glinting as garishly as the faux-gold orbs on the Christmas tree behind her. The 2020 Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition final judge Josephine Humphreys said of “Next to Godliness,” “I particularly admire the ways in which these characters are made utterly convincing. Their dialogue is clever and realistic, and the main character, Meredith, is both strong and vulnerable. There are no missteps in the writing.”