Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
and radical and collaborative, and I was immediately enthralled with these new models of creativity and education. In fact, I never would’ve chosen Goddard College for my MFA if NCLR hadn’t introduced me to Black Mountain College. My internship with the journal changed the course of my creative life in more ways than one. Alex asked me to write an introduction to a piece by Paul Metcalf, Herman Melville’s great-grandson. This would be my first professional publication. I was thrilled – and absolutely petrified. I wanted so badly to get it right. I respected Alex tremendously, and I had no idea what I was doing. I remember walking into his office tentatively one day and asking him, in my most professional, faux-confident voice, “What exactly are you looking for in this piece?” And he gave the most Alex Albright answer imaginable: “I’ll know it when I see it.” Gulp! I smiled and nodded like I understood, then shuffled out of his office and knocked back a glass or three of wine. When the buzz wore off and I stopped hyperventilating, I got to work, sweating through the drafting wilderness until I got the piece done. Somehow, Alex saw enough in what I wrote to publish it. When I held that issue in my hands, with my name in it, it meant the world. It still does.
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That experience taught me a lot: Sometimes the only way to grow as a writer is to leap before you’re ready, to write your way into clarity, to trust yourself. It also taught me how to write professionally, how to work with editors during the revision process, and how to hold my own, even when I was full of doubt. Flash forward to 2000, when I returned to ECU as a full-time faculty member. In 2005, I rejoined NCLR, this time as a staff member. I became Assistant Editor in 2015 and Senior Associate Editor in 2019. And after all these years, I’m still learning with every issue. None of this would be possible without Margaret Bauer. When she took over the journal in 1997, she honored what Alex had built and transformed NCLR into the literary powerhouse it is today. Margaret expanded the journal’s reach, added digital issues, and made it a place where emerging voices and literary legends sit side by side. She’s a phenomenal editor and one of the most committed literary citizens I know. Her leadership has helped NCLR not just survive but thrive. Working with both Margaret and Alex has been an honor and a joy. NCLR taught me more than how to edit or write or revise. It taught me how to be part of something meaningful. It gave me my first byline and a frontrow seat to North Carolina’s rich literary culture. So thank you to NCLR, to Alex and Margaret, and to all the writers and editors who make this work matter. And thank you to the North Carolina Writers Conference for honoring a journal that has taught me – and so many others – how to find our voices. n n n The North Carolina Writers Conference (not to be confused with the North Carolina Writers’ Network, which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year) dates back to 1950. Since 1977, the annual end-ofJuly gathering has culminated in a banquet honoring one of North Carolina’s literary stars. The Friday and Saturday programs leading up to the banquet typically focus on the honoree’s work or interests. This year’s honoree was Clyde Edgerton, author of ten novels and two nonfiction books, as well as a musician and painter. Edgerton has a doctorate in Education and just recently retired from his faculty position at UNC Wilmington: he was the Thomas S. Kenan III Professor of Creative Writing. Saturday’s panels focused on teaching and writing, writing in multiple genres, literature and music, and writing humor. The traditional broadside given to all conference attendees featured not only a passage from one of Edgerton’s books, but also one of his paintings. n n n
ABOVE NCLR panel left to right, Ed Southern, Alex Albright,
Margaret Bauer, and Christy Hallberg, Greensboro, NC, 19 July 2025; photograph by Amber Flora Thomas
Read an interview with CHRISTY ALEXANDER HALLBERG about her novel Searching For Jimmy Page (Livingston, 2021) in NCLR Online Winter 2022.