The 2026 issues feature Military Writing in North Carolina, guest edited by Anna Froula, Professor of Film Studies in the English Department at East Carolina University. The print issue opens with Jessica Cory’s essay about the intertwining roles of Lumbee and US military identity in Delano Cumming’s Moon Dash Warrior. Then three daughters craft memoirs and poetry from their experiences with their military fathers: Leah Hampton’s memoir about growing up on military bases abroad and in North Carolina, Elizabeth Lewis Corley’s poem of warfighters on a bombing mission over Vietnam, and Kimberly Towers-Kubik’s story of using fiction to understand her father. Michael White contributes poetry and a watercolor print. Then, Navy veteran Alyssa Froemel interviews Marine Corps veteran Tracy Crow. Other interviews in the feature section are with Michael Ramos, LeJuane “El’Ja” Bowens, Mariah Smith, and Russell Worth Parker. The feature section also includes Morrow Dowdle’s poem, which won the Barrax/Bayes contest for military poets; Laura Cruser’s story, which won the 2025 Doris Betts Fiction Prize; Paul Crenshaw’s memoir of his stepfather’s experience in the first Gulf War; and Joseph Bathanti’s narrative of teaching writing workshops for veterans. These written works are complemented by art created by North Carolina military veterans. In other sections of the issue read an essay about several Appalachian writers by novelist Terry Roberts, more honorees from the Doris Betts Fiction Prize and the Jacobs/Jones African American Literary Prize contests, the James Applewhite Poetry Prize honorees’ poems, an essay by Ben Fountain, and interviews with novelists Mimi Herman and Sharon Kurtzman. The North Carolina Literary Review, edited by Margaret D. Bauer, is produced at East Carolina University.
