74
2021
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Honorable Mention 2020
DorisBetts Fiction Prize
WHEREVER
YOU GO by Nancy H. Williard
with art by Robert Boyd
Born in North Carolina, NANCY H. WILLIARD returned in 2014 after twenty years in California’s eastern Sierra mountains. She earned an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is working on a Young Adult novel about foster children. An editor, educator, researcher, and writer, her writing can be found in Southern Women’s Review, Long Story Short, Delta Women Ezine, and Southern Review of Books.
The 2020 Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition final judge Josephine Humphreys called “Wherever You Go” “a powerful story about the need to escape – from grief, from memory, from love – and the gradual realization that escape may be impossible. Moving to a new place will not be the solution. The narrator is ultimately able to extract only minimal compensation, and yet at the same time it is compensation enough, no matter where his place on earth ends up being. A clear streak of honesty runs through this story.”