Common Inspiration | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This article was originally created by the ECU News Services.

Latest NCLR explores state's literature in global context

    The theme of this year's issue of the award-winning North Carolina Literary Review is "North Carolina Literature in a Global Context." The print issue features cover art by Chapel Hill resident Eduardo Lapetina, a native of Argentina.

    The writers and artists in this year's issue all share a common bond: they have lived in North Carolina, but they have also called other states and countries home.

    NCLR Editor Margaret Bauer writes in the issue's introduction, "Almost two dozen years of North Carolina Literary Review content reveal what an inspiration the Old North State is to writers, whether they are born here, move here, or just pass through for a visit. Our 24th issue explores how North Carolina writers have been inspired by living and traveling beyond the state's borders."

    The 2015 global print issue traverses the world. It includes interviews with N.C. State University professor Elaine Neil Orr, who grew up in Nigeria, and Monique Truong, born in South Vietnam, who grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and literary criticism by Turkish scholar Tanfer Emin Tunc and British scholar R.J. Ellis.

    Laura Herbst's Doris Betts Prize story "The Cliffs of Mobenga" is written from the perspective of a teenager from North Carolina, serving as a translator for her uncle's missionary trip to West Africa. Essayist and fiction writer Philip Gerard, originally from Delaware, now on the faculty of UNC Wilmington, discusses the complexities of historical novel writing, focusing on his own investigations of the Wilmington Race Riot.

    The issue also contains poetry by Connecticut native Peter Makuck, New York native Marylin Hervieux, South Carolina native Janet Joyner, as well as Elizabeth Jackson's poem, "East End, West End," winner of the 2014 James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition and an essay by James Applewhite that compares the work of North Carolina's Randall Jarrell with poetry by William Wordsworth.

    NCLR has won numerous awards since it was first published in 1992, most recently, the 2014 Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. NCLR is published by East Carolina University and the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. For subscription information, go to www.nclr.ecu.edu.