North Carolina Literature in a Global Context
N C L R ONLINE
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PHOTOGRAPH BY JAN G. HENSLEY
Jaki Shelton Green, and Shelby Stephenson at the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Southern PInes, NC, 12 Oct. 2014
PHOTOGRAPH BY JAN G. HENSLEY
ABOVE TOP TO BOTTOM New inductees Rondald H. Bayes,
PHOTOGRAPH BY JAN G. HENSLEY
Stephenson is another native North Carolinian, but fellow Johnston County writer Margaret Maron reports in her introduction to him for the induction ceremony’s printed program that an early “job with AT&T sent him traveling through seven northeastern states,” after which he enrolled in some classes at the University of Pittsburg and then in the PhD program at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Stephenson certainly did “come home again,” to North Carolina, with his wife Linda (Nin), “his best editor,” according to Maron and Wilson. After a long career at UNC Pembroke where Stephenson edited Pembroke Magazine, he retired to his family’s homeplace near Benson, where he continues to write and publish his poetry. His latest collection, The Hunger of Freedom (Red Dashboard, 2014), is reviewed in this issue. Stephenson’s honors include the North Carolina Award in Literature, as well as the Oscar Arnold Young Award, the Zoe Kincaid-Brockman Award, and the Brockman-Campbell Award. And in 2014, he was named Poet Laureate of North Carolina. “Poets and writers, yeah!” Shelby Stephenson said, upon stepping up to the podium. “What a place this is, and what a special state we live in.” Indeed. The theme of the day at the 2014 induction ceremony was the generosity of the North Carolina writing community, as evidenced by the support writers give each other in, to use 2004 Inductee Doris Betts’s term, “the writingest state.” Both the poets who introduced the latest inductees and the inductees themselves remarked upon each other’s generosity of time with and support of each other’s work. For example, new inductee Ron Bayes reported to the Weymouth audiece how many of the writers visiting North Carolina have told him that “North Carolina is a strange place. We have been reading in New York and Philadelphia and elsewhere on our tour. And when we got to North Carolina, writers were always saying what wonderful writers they knew and we must meet them. We didn’t hear that anywhere else. It was always sort of a closed corporation, and we know two or three fine writers, and we’re it. And in North
Carolina, a willingness to share these other talents was preeminent. Who could be in a finer place than North Carolina?” Certainly not the editor of a publication like this one. I am always heartened by the support of each other that I witness when I attend literary events in my adopted state. The mutual affection between writers (and editors) in North Carolina has, in fact, inspired next year’s special feature topic for NCLR’s 25th issue: North Carolina’s nurturing writing community. n