Campbell named winner of Applewhite Prize

A Charlotte writer has won the North Carolina Literary Review’s (NCLR) James Applewhite Poetry Prize.

Barbara Campbell’s winning poem, “Half an Avocado and a Dollop of Hollandaise,” will be published in the NCLR 2023 print issue produced by East Carolina University. Campbell also received honorable mention for “Dinner at Friede’s Tavern,” which also will be included in the NCLR. Campbell will receive $350 for the combined honors.

Barbara Campbell was named the winner of N.C. Literary Review’s James Applewhite Poetry Prize. (Contributed photo)

A native New Yorker, Campbell has lived in Charlotte since the 1960s. She was associate editor of Red Clay Books and also worked for East Woods Press and Planned Parenthood. She has had poems published in Rattle, Poet Lore, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Kakalak, Pinesong, The Charlotte Writers’ Club Anthology and NCLR. She is working on her first collection of poems.

This year, over 400 poems were submitted by 115 poets. Judge LeAnne Howe selected Campbell’s poems from 11 finalists whose poems were selected for publication in 2023 by poetry editor Jeffrey Franklin.

Howe said of the winning poem, “The language in the poem is economical, yet it reveals the loneliness and disillusionment of a mother that drinks too much, and a father that believes he can show her how to consume just one-old fashioned at lunch. Wonderful.” Howe noted that Campbell’s “Dinner at Friede’s Tavern” “is another ‘Mom and Dad drink too much’ poem, … a memory worth revisiting. Like an Ethan Canin story set in the 1970 Midwest (or pick any era in the Midwest), the poem contains all the magic and horror of family dining in restaurants. Its tone: staccato.”

“Deep Woods” by Nancy Swanson of Pisgah Forest took second place in the contest. “The poem is haunting, and terrifying, and moves forward into nowhere. Leaves us shivering,” Howe said. Swanson taught in Florida, South Carolina, Washington state and Hawaii before retiring in western North Carolina. She has published her poetry in Broad River Review, Chattahoochee Review, English Journal, Kakalak and Pinesong, among others. Swanson will receive $150 and publication in NCLR 2023. The other finalists will receive $50 and publication in NCLR Online Winter 2023.

Howe is the Eidson Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia and an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She writes fiction, poetry, screenplays, creative nonfiction, plays and scholarship, primarily about American Indian and Native American experiences. She wrote and narrated the documentary film, “Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire,” spotlighting the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina.

NCLR has been produced at ECU since 1992 and receives additional funding, which covers the Applewhite Prize honoraria, from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. For subscription information, visit www.nclr.ecu.edu/subscriptions/.

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