North Carolina Miscellany
95
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2025 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY TERRY CAWLEY
The Art of War by Sun Tzu My boss is bullying me. Read Sun Tzu, The Art of War. My next-door neighbor Chris wants to blow up my shit. Read Sun Tzu, The Art of War. My co-worker Bill Rockne won’t play nice. Read Sun Tzu, The Art of War. My partner is giving me the stink eye. In ten days or less I will be dead. My partner gave up on me. My partner punted. Read Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Sun Tzu writes in The Art of War, if a thousand cicadas come to visit you, let there be a million instead. Sun Tzu also writes, the above does not apply to the instance of a thousand locusts, or a thousand termites. It is written by Sun Tzu in The Art of War, if you wait long enough by the river, eventually the bodies of your enemies will float by. >>>
TERRY CAWLEY has written several stage plays that have received full productions and staged readings, including at professional theatres in Atlanta, Chapel Hill, and Cleveland. These plays include “Playing Office,” a two-act play selected for staged readings by The Cleveland Public Theatre in January 1995; “Grease Paper,” a two-act play produced by The Academy Theatre in Atlanta in 1987, also received a staged reading at Playmakers Repertory Company at UNC Chapel Hill and was the competition winner of the Playwrights Fund of North Carolina Annual Playwriting Fellowship. A member of the Dramatists Guild, Cawley has received numerous writing honors including an Artist’s Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council for his playwriting. He is also an award-winning poet, twice receiving the annual Academy of American Poets Prize at Kenyon College, an honorable mention in the 2025 Charlotte Writers Club poetry competition, and second prize in 2025 in the annual literary competition of the Arts Council of York County, SC. In 2024, a chapter of his novel in progress also received honorable mention in prose in the same competition. This multi-genre writer received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Kenyon College and graduated from the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law in 1990, where he served on the board of editors of the UNC Law Review. Cawley is an attorney in private practice.