Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
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2021 JOHN EHLE PRIZE AWARDED TO ESSAY ON EHLE The North Carolina Literary Review is pleased to report that for the first time since its creation, the John Ehle Prize for NCLR content related to a neglected or forgotten North Carolina writer will be awarded to an essay on the work of John Ehle himself, written by Savannah Paige Murray. Murray, a native of Asheville, NC, has reviewed regularly for NCLR since 2018, when she was a graduate student at Appalachian State University. After earning her PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech, she returned to North Carolina to serve as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at her alma mater. Her writing focuses on Appalachian literature, the French Broad River, and the Blue Ridge Mountains.
According to NCLR Editor Margaret Bauer, “The Ehle award was created after John Ehle’s passing as an appropriate means of honoring his memory.” Bauer added, “I felt gifted when a review copy of Press 53’s 2006 edition of Ehle’s The Land Breakers introduced his work to me. This fortuitous occurrence inspired me to encourage essays on and interviews with North Carolina writers like Ehle whose work has not received the scholarly attention they deserve.” According to Murray in the excerpt below, included in her original submission, she was also introduced to Ehle through gifted copies of two of his novels. Murray’s prize essay, “An Ethic of Everyday Nature in John Ehle’s The Road,” will be published in the 2021 print issue of NCLR. Murray will receive $250 from the prize’s co-sponsor, Press 53 of Winston-Salem. n n n
Savannah Paige Murray on Finding John Ehle’s Mountain Novels I had never heard of John Ehle before the frozen deep in a Ron Rash phase (which I have never recovered pipes burst in the Yancey County Public Library from). “Oh well, you would love John Ehle, then!” Dr. in Burnsville, NC. In 2014, I was interning with Barron said. During lunch later, I scrawled Ehle’s name archivist-extraordinaire Heather South at Western along with a couple of titles of Dr. Barron’s favorite Ehle Regional Archives (WRA), in Asheville, my hometown. “Mountain Novels” in my notebook. I expected to create finding On our third and final aids and assist researchers day working alongside “IN MY STUDY OF JOHN EHLE’S WRITING, during my four-week stint the good people at the I NOT ONLY DEVELOPED A GREATER at WRA, and for the most Yancey County Public part, I did just that. But, I Library, Dr. Barron handed APPRECIATION OF MY OWN ANCESTORS, could not have anticipated me a taped-up cardboard WHO – MUCH LIKE THE CHARACTERS the January 9 call from Dr. box as I was heading out. Dan Barron, Avery-MitchUpon my return, I opened IN EHLE’S SEVEN-PART SERIES ‘THE ell-Yancey Regional Library the box to find that Dr. Director, reporting a burst Barron had gifted me with MOUNTAIN NOVELS’ AS DR. DAN CALLED pipe in the Yancey County two of Ehle’s novels, gorTHEM – STRUGGLED TO CREATE A Library that damaged hungeous first editions of The dreds of history books. Land Breakers and The LIFE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTH Dr. Barron reached out Road, the very same titles to South, as leader of the I had added to my noteCAROLINA, BUT I ALSO CAME TO SEE newly developed Cultural book’s ever-growing “To HOW EHLE’S NOVELS OFFER READERS Resources Emergency SalRead” list. vage Team. In true “South” Although I’ve stayed A NUANCED UNDERSTANDING OF THE fashion (she is a remarkin touch with “Dr. Dan” ably kind and helpful indisince my days on the salNATURAL ENVIRONMENT IN SOUTHERN vidual), within two hours vage team, I’m not sure APPALACHIA.”—Savannah Paige Murray we arrived in Burnsville, I have ever let him know ready to help Dr. Barron how much these books and several Friends of the Library Volunteers who meant to me. Dr. Dan’s gift came at the perfect time in my had shown up to try and dry out the library’s newly life. I was in the process of learning more about my own water-logged tomes.1 family’s mountain roots, tracing the lives of Goforths, As I worked alongside the volunteers and library Davidsons, and Trueloves, who lived in Buncombe County staff, placing paper towels every fifty pages or so, in the eighteenth century. I was beginning to learn the and setting the books upright to dry, we chatted value not only of my own family’s history but of the hisabout the mountains and mountain writers. I was tory of Appalachia and what it means to live in the lovely,
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“Yikes in Yancey,” blog, History for All the People, State Archives of North Carolina, 14 Jan. 2014: web.