130
2013
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
number 22
2012
DorisBetts
Fiction Prize finalist
the business
of
dreaming by
Wendell slid his phone into the
Kathryn
glove-box and took out the pistol. The
Etters with Lovatt art by
gun, small and light, felt like a toy in his hand, but he knew better. No sense in
George
not loading it either. He put the gun in the
Scott
bottom of his bag, beneath the change of socks and underwear and the shaving kit, and talked himself out of the truck. He knew he may as well go ahead and get this over with.
Auditory Turbulence (mixed media acrylic, graphite, masking tape on canvas, 60x48) by George Scott
First thing, the smell of jasmine hit him. It was everywhere. White blooms glazed over the green leaves like new snowfall, the whole tangle spilling over a fence that separated the parking spaces from the building. He took a good look, appreciating what a difference brick veneer, pickets, and a pile of money could make. He pressed the lock button on his key again, just to be sure, before starting up the sidewalk. A hedge of tea olives ran along each side. He looked left to right as he moved toward the entry, checking over his shoulder as he hit the doorbell. The sound, more squawk than chime, brought a man from the back. As the figure drew closer to the glass doors, Wendell – who had a talent for
Kathryn Etters Lovatt earned a master’s in creative writing from Hollins University. She continued graduate studies while teaching at the University of Hong Kong. The winner of the 2012 Press 53 Open Award for the short story, she is also a past winner of the Doris Betts Fiction Prize and a three-time winner of South Carolina Writers Workshop’s Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Award for fiction. Both her poetry and fiction have received Pushcart Prize nominations. She is a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow and a previous executive board member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop and the Greensboro (NC) Writers. She has been awarded the 2013 Individual Artist Fellowship for prose by the South Carolina Arts Commission. Before moving to Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1993, Lovatt lived in Greensboro, NC, and served as fiction editor for Carolina Wren Press. She remained active in her Greensboro writing group while living abroad. She currently resides in her hometown of Camden, SC, but spends as much time as possible writing in her Southport, NC, home, which is just around the corner from the Robert Ruark Inn – fitting, since she once won a fiction prize awarded by North Carolina’s Robert Ruark Society.
Explaining her selection of this story as a finalist, NCLR Fiction Editor Liza Wieland said she was “hooked” from the start, “and the story lived up to the promise of its opening. The subject matter is wholly original and deeply moving, and the quiet tenderness between Wendell and Gene feels both true and revelatory.”