NCLR features Black Mountain College

The fourth issue of East Carolina University’s award-winning literary journal, the North Carolina Literary Review, has been published by the university’s English department.

The new issue features an extensive look at Black Mountain College, the experimental school that operated outside of Asheville from 1933-56 and which was a haven for many of the United States’ most famous avant-garde artists and writers.

“Many people in North Carolina have heard of it, but few have a clear idea of how radical it really was, or of how important it has been in the development of American culture,” said Alex Albright, the journal’s editor.

“This issue has been our most complicated one, but I believe it gives both a comprehensive overview of the school’s history, as well as a representative sampling of the important creative work still being done by Black Mountain College alumni,” he said. The issue features overviews of the college’s history, memoirs of student days, interviews, and new fiction, poetry, and art by Black Mountain alumni—and a variety of previously unpublished archival photographs. Also included are articles about Thomas Wolfe, Asheville’s literary renaissance, and the 1995 national poetry slam competitions in Asheville. In addition, the issue contains poems by several North Carolina poets, an extensive essay review of coastal literature, as well as regular departments such as book reviews, “Freedom of Speech,” updates on small magazines in North Carolina, and the continuing dictionary of North Carolina writers.

NCLR was named Best New Journal of 1994 by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Its first three issues have also won a total of 16 regional, national, and international design awards, including inclusion in the 1994 “100 Show.” Staff includes Albright and associate editors Jane Ashford and John S. Patterson; art director Eva Roberts and associate art director Stanton Blakeslee; and several student assistant editors from ECU’s English department. The Black Mountain College issue is dedicated to the life and work of Bertie Edwards Fearing, the ECU English professor and founding associate editor of NCLR who died in May 1995.

With the new issue, released this week, Albright said the journal changes from a twice-yearly to an annual publication. He said subscription rates will remain the same at $17 for two issues (two years) and $31 for four issues (four years). Current subscribers will be converted to additional years. All new subscriptions will begin with the issue scheduled for the spring of 1996.

Individual copies of NCLR’s Black Mountain College issue are available from many independent bookstores across the state for $12, or directly from NCLR for $15 postpaid. For further information or to order copies, write the North Carolina Literary Review, English Department, East Carolina University, Greenville NC 27858.