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2021
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Sharing North Carolina’s Rich Literary History by Margaret D. Bauer, Editor Several of the books reviewed in this section relate to themes of past issues: North Carolina African American (2019), Appalachian (2010), War (2014), and Young Adult (2006) literature and Literature and the Other Arts (2017). Others are by or about writers featured in past issues, from A.R. Ammons, who published new poems in the earliest issues of NCLR, to Leah Hampton and Katey Schultz, previous winners of the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, and including authors interviewed previously, like Ron Rash, Monique Truong, Marly Youmans, and Randall Kenan. I will take this space, therefore, to ask for your help putting copies of the print issues into libraries across the state. We have at least a dozen complete sets left of the twenty-nine annual print issues. Please propose to your book club, writing group, or other organization the idea of sponsoring a gift of a complete set to your local library. For just $400, postage included, your gift will not only put NCLR on their shelves, but also help us to reach our annual revenue expectations. To each of these fortunate libraries, we will also send, as part of your gift, the thirtieth issue when it is published later this summer.*
* Find this complete set option in our online store here.
Individually, you can also help us to meet our income goal and empty our storage closet by purchasing individual back issues to complete your own set. Go to our store here to purchase online, or find an order form here if you prefer to pay by check. I assure you, back issues of NCLR, like the fine literature featured and examined in our pages, don’t get old. (And Charles Frazier says they really class up a place.) At this writing, and with the support of a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, we are preparing to digitize the earliest issues of NCLR, published in the days before digital subscription services. More difficult than scanning the issues from before the days of providing a final .pdf to the printer is gathering the necessary permissions from writers, artists, and other image sources to publish the 1992–2020 content via digital databases. If you are among these contributors to past issues and have not yet heard from us (or not yet replied to our inquiries), we would be very grateful if you would contact us. We may have had difficulty finding a current address for you. Our primary mission, as you know, is to promote and preserve North Carolina’s rich literary culture. Let’s get NCLR into libraries and the hands of readers across the country and beyond. n