NCLR to celebrate African American literature Sunday at N.C. Central

The North Carolina Literary Review and the North Carolina Central University College of Arts and Sciences are co-hosting a celebration of the 2019 issue of NCLR, featuring N.C. African American literature.

The event will be on the NCCU campus at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 22, and will include readings by Stephanie Powell Watts and Amber Flora Thomas, two writers featured in the issue.

Originally from North Carolina, Watts lives in Pennsylvania, where she is an associate professor at Lehigh University. She won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for her debut story collection, “We Are Taking Only What We Need” (2012), which was on 2013’s Best Summer Reads by O: The Oprah Magazine. She is also the author of “No One Is Coming to Save Us” (2017), which received numerous honors, including the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work by a debut author.

Thomas has published three collections of poetry, most recently “Red Channel in the Rupture,” published by Red Hen Press. She is a Cave Canem fellow and has received the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and the Rella Lossy Poetry Prize. She is an associate professor at East Carolina University.

Also at the event, NCLR editor Margaret Bauer will announce the recipient of the first Paul Green Prize for content related to the work of the playwright and activist Paul Green.

This new award is funded by the Paul Green Foundation, established in 1982. Foundation director Marsha Warren noted the appropriateness of the announcement being made at this event, since the North Carolina Freedom Park archives are housed at NCCU, and Freedom Park was initiated in 2001 by the Paul Green Foundation. The Paul Green Prize-winning essay will be published in the 2020 edition of the review.

The event is free and open to the public. It will be in the School of Education auditorium at 700 Cecil St. on the NCCU campus in Durham. NCLR issues and subscriptions will be available for sale (cash and checks only).

The NCLR, produced at ECU since 1992, has won numerous awards and citations. The University of North Carolina Press has published NCLR since 2017. Find submission and subscription information on NCLR’s website.

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ECU News Services
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Phone: 252-328-6481
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Contact: Margaret Bauer, NCLR editor, bauerm@ecu.edu

Telephone: 252-328-1537