Writers Who Teach, Teachers Who Write
Greenville, NC. More recently, he published The Forgotten First: B-1 and the Integration of the Modern Navy, which was a finalist for the 2014 Montaigne Medal and winner of a 2014 Willie Parker Peace History Book Award from the NC Society of Historians. Not too long after handing NCLR over to me, Alex and his wife Elizabeth had a son, Silas, and then the three of them moved to Fountain, just outside of Greenville, where Alex has been active in town and county politics, serving on the Fountain Board of Commissioners and as Mayor pro tem. He has since been elected to represent District 4 on the Pitt County Board of Commissioners. In downtown Fountain, Alex and Elizabeth opened the R.A. Fountain General Store, which hosts music – mainly bluegrass – most weekends, as well as, no surprise, the
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occasional reading by a visiting writer. Neither will you be surprised to hear that the walls of this local gathering place are lined with bookshelves, filled with first and special edition, rare and recent, used and new, cloth and paperback books for sale. For this enterprise (and so much more), Alex was honored in 2017 by the North Carolina Writers Conference for his “efforts to create a vibrant and unique literary and cultural center and community resource.” The John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities “honors distinguished individuals who have strengthened the educational, cultural, and civic life of North Carolinians through their life work.” Well, that certainly describes the career of my colleague and friend, Alex Albright, and I am honored to bestow the 2021 Caldwell medal upon him. n n n
A LIFETIME’S LABORS adapted from the honoree’s prepared and delivered acceptance remarks
ABOVE Alex Albright and Eva Roberts, the original Art Director
who created NCLR’s unique design, during the 25th issue celebration, Oct. 2016
This first issue has the grackle on it. That kind of became our unofficial state bird and our unofficial campaign to establish East Carolina as the fiftyfirst state. We chose the grackle for this cover because there are so many of them and so many people look at them and think, “Where did all these things come from, they’re so common.” We took that as a badge of honor for what we were trying to show the rest of the state as we demonstrated not only what could happen in Greenville and in East Carolina, but how we could tie that in to, not only the rest of North Carolina, but to the rest of the world: a worldview that encompasses the humanities and all that it brings to us in our understanding of how we live in that world. I also thank Fred Chappell who was for me, as for many, a writing mentor, and though I didn’t know it at the time, also a teaching mentor in graduate school. I had no interest in teaching, in fact didn’t much care for academics, didn’t want PHOTOGRAPH BY SETH GULLEDGE; COURTESY OF NCLR
This is a special award because it’s for a lifetime’s labors in promoting what has truly been my pleasure to promote. And I believe that it’s an award also for the North Carolina Literary Review. NCLR would not have happened without the tutelage of Bertie Fearing, or the vision of Keats Sparrow, who was our Dean of Arts and Sciences – but he was really the uber dean of Humanities at ECU for many years. It wouldn’t have happened without Eva Roberts, whose artistry in design literally changed how I see the world. When NCLR first came out, our co-sponsor, “Lit & Hist,” was having their meeting in Raleigh, and Roy Parker, who was president then, held up the first issue. And he talked in glowing terms about this gorgeous new magazine that had come out, being published in, he said, “of all places, East Carolina University.” And the room full of folks kind of laughed. They chuckled, and said, “Wow, East Carolina is doing this.” And we still are, thanks to Margaret.
