Margaret D. Bauer – författare

One of Paul Green's best plays, The House of Connelly, was the first play performed (on Broadway in 1931) by the renowned Group Theatre of New York. This book reintroduces the play, and the playwright--famous in his day, but largely forgotten now, although his outdoor symphonic drama The Lost Colony continues to be performed every summer in Manteo, North Carolina.The House of Connelly, is a more traditional drama, comparable to the writing of Tennessee Williams, and the editor asserts that the play deals more directly and fully with racial issues of the early 20th-century South than Williams did in his work. A new edition of the play includes both the original tragic ending and the revised ending Green wrote upon the Group Theatre directors' request. The writing, production and publication history of the play is provided, as well as a scene-by-scene critical analysis and a discussion of the 1934 film adaptation, Carolina. The play's theme is change and Green shows with both endings that the South had to change to survive.

The 2020 issue showcases North Carolina expatriate writers, ranging from Harriet Jacobs, who moved north to escape enslavement in North Carolina to Glenis Redmond, who developed her poetic voice during her years living here in North Carolina and now travels over 35,000 miles a year bringing poetry to the masses, thus earning the title Road Warrior Poet. Between, find essays on other writers with North Carolina roots: Charles Chesnutt, Tony Earley, Lionel Shriver, and Stephanie Powell Watts. Read retired Emory Professor/Goldsboro native Jim Grimsley's interview with retired LSU Professor/Goldsboro native Moira Crone, featuring her own art. This interview was selected by Elaine Neil Orr to receive the 2020 John Ehle Prize.The issue's cover art is by A.R. Ammons, an Eastern North Carolina poet who spent most of his career teaching at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Also interviewed: Durham native/novelist/California television writer Gwendolyn Parker; poet Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, from her current residence in Hawaii; longtime Texas resident Ben Fountain, talking about growing up in Eastern North Carolina; and Raleigh native Mary Robinette Kowal, recipient of the three biggest speculative fiction awards, the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus, for her novel The Calculating Stars. Bringing up the oft-heard North Carolina remark, "You can't throw a rock in this state without hitting a writer". Editor Margaret Bauer notes, "It turns out that it might be dangerous for North Carolina writers if rocks are thrown anywhere, not just within the state's borders. The Old North State seems a fertile starting point, even if some writers do not remain". Despite these authors branching off to places far from Tar Heel soil, their writing roots are deep in North Carolina, and North Carolina has left its mark. The subject of one essay, Watts, for example, describes her novel as "The Great Gatsby set in rural North Carolina". And Hedge Coke says, "I am never really away from the land and waters there. ... Closing my eyes, [North Carolina] is always present".The Flashbacks section of the issue includes the 2019 James Applewhite Poetry Prize winner, "Meditation in a Glass House" by Wayne Johns; the other finalists selected for honors; and new poetry by the namesake of the award, James Applewhite, and former North Carolina Poet Laureate, Fred Chappell; the 2019 Doris Betts Fiction Prize winning short story "Something Coming" by Katey Schultz; the premiere Paul Green Prize essay by Rachel Warner about renowned author Zora Neale Hurston's brief residence in North Carolina; and an interview with Charlotte writer/musician Jeff Jackson.

This year's feature section, guest edited by Kirstin L. Squint, is historic, the first focused on Native American Literature of North Carolina. The feature section includes creative nonfiction by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), and poetry by Mary Leauna Christensen (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), and Tonya Holy Elk (Oglala Lakota/Lumbee descent), as well as painting, photography, sculpture, and pottery by Cherokee, Lumbee, and Catawba artists. The cover is a paper weaving, a new form created by Eastern Band and Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rhiannon Skye Tafoya, based on the traditional Cherokee river cane basket. In addition to the work by Indigenous writers and artists, the special feature section also includes literary criticism and an interview by scholars of Native American and Southern literature. They discuss work by Cherokee writers Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Gladys Cardiff, and Blake Hausman; Lumbee writers Brittany D. Hunt, Leslie Locklear, Christina Pacheco, Barbara Braveboy-Locklear, Anetra L. Dial, Becky Goins, and Wendy Moore-Cummings; and the eighteenth century testimonio of a woman from the town of Joara, mostly likely Catawba, Teresa Martin.The Flashbacks and North Carolina Miscellany sections of this issue include another interview (with Phillip Lewis about his debut novel The Barrowfields) and more literary criticism (on John Darnielle's fiction), as well as the 2022 winners and other honorees of the Doris Betts Fiction Prize (1st place, Ellen Miller Reid, and 2nd place, Theresa Dowell Blackinton), Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize (winner Audrey Jennifer Smith), and James Applewhite Poetry Prize contests (1st place and honorable mention poems by Barbara Campbell and second place by Nancy Swanson).

The North Carolina Literary Review's 33rd flagship print issue continues illuminating the 2024 feature of North Carolina writings about disabilities, with Guest Feature Editor Dr. Casey Kayser. The feature section contains Delia Steverson's essay on the autobiographical writings by deaf/blind author Mary Herring White and author Audrey Jennifer Smith's interview with James Tate Hill, a writer with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy. From our 2023 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize contest is the essay "Buy Now!" by finalist Ashley Harris, a writer with M.S., and concludes with Taylor Hagood's essay on disability and deformity in Ron Rash's novel Serena and Donna Summerlin discussing mental health in Lee Smith's novel Guests on Earth. In the remainder of the issue, NCLR founding editor Alex Albright remembers Fred Chappell, former NC Poet Laureate, who passed away earlier this year. Award-winning author David Joy talked to Leah Hampton. Mark Powell was interviewed by Zackary Vernon. Donald Paul Haspel explores the impact of Paul Green's World War I experience on The Lost Colony. Also included are an investigative piece by Stephanie Browner on Lorraine Hansberry's planned play based on Charles W. Chesnutt's Marrow of Tradition and Biographer Jean W. Cash writes about the influence of Gail Godwin's Peace College years on her fiction. Contest winners included are the 2023 James Applewhite Poetry Prize contest winning poem by Janis Harrington, and the third-place poem by Debra Kaufman and the Doris Betts Fiction Prize (sponsored by the North Carolina Writers' Network) by Paul D. Reali. Other fiction in the issue is Gary V. Powell's short story. NC visual artists featured within the print issue are Max Herbert (cover), RaeAnn McDonough, Catherine Edgerton, Joan Mansfield, Frank Hunter, Katharin Wiese, Andrea Bruce, Cameron Johnson, Ashley T. Evans, and Kate Nartker.

The 2025 issues, feature LGBTQ writers of North Carolina, guest edited by Dwight Tanner, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Appalachian State University. The print issue opens with Eric Solomon’s essay about R.F.D., “a rural national periodical connecting rural gay men and lesbians,” co-founded in the early 1970s by North Carolina native Allan Troxler and his life partner. This essay is described by editorial board member Zackary Vernon as “a fascinating exploration of . . . a little-known chapter of North Carolina’s queer literary and cultural history” and “an important rural/activist strain in queer thinking that is at once social and environmental.” This essay is followed by an interview with Andy Martrich talking about his new book on the unpublished manuscripts of the Jargon Society, inspired by correspondence with Thomas Meyer, partner of Jonathan Williams, the Asheville native and Black Mountain College alumnus who founded the small press. According to interviewer J. Gordon Faylor, Martrich has “discovered a ‘peripheral history’ of The Jargon Society that provides a striking, alternative history to one of the most quietly impactful small presses in American history.” Other interviews in the feature section are with Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Jessica Jacobs, and De’Shawn Charles Winslow, and the issue includes two essays on Randall Kenan and an essay on Carter Sickels’s novel The Prettiest Star, which has been awarded NCLR’s Randall Kenan Prize for an essay or interview on a new North Carolina writer. The featured creative writing includes a short story by Jim Grimsley, author of the critically acclaimed novel Dream Boy, and the 2024 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize essay by Ashlen Renner. Several of these works are complemented by art created by North Carolina LGBTQ artists, and the cover art collage, designed by NCLR Art Director Dana Ezzell, features art by Tim Tate from his Queer Glass: 30 Years of Craft Activism collection. Tate co-founded the Washington Glass Studio/School in Washington, DC, based on Penland School of Crafts and his experience there as an instructor, as well as continued close association with the school as a supporter. In other sections of the issue read Katherine Henninger’s John Ehle Prize essay on Kaye Gibbons’s novel Ellen Foster, Ben Fountain’s Thomas Wolfe lecture, and the winners of the 2024 James Applewhite Poetry Prize and Doris Betts Fiction Prize, as well as honorees and finalists from these contests and the Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize contest, again, all complemented by fine art created by North Carolina artists. The North Carolina Literary Review, edited by Margaret D. Bauer, is produced at East Carolina University.

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.