NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

Lifetime Achievement Award

Margaret Bauer
Department of English
Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences

When Department of English professor Margaret D. Bauer came to East Carolina University in 1996, she was seeking a job teaching Southern literature. The additional responsibility of editing the state’s literary review was a bonus.

“I probably thought, ‘I’ll read a lot of submissions, pick what goes in and proof them,'” Bauer recalled in an interview.

Margaret Bauer

Instead, the North Carolina Literary Review became a publication that has consumed her career, transforming her into a self-professed “writer groupie” but also a sincere advocate for North Carolina authors and their works.

Bauer has earned the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity for 2013-14. Awarded annually at East Carolina, it recognizes her successes in the classroom and in scholarly endeavors but, most prominently, her role in the statewide literary community.

“(The review) turned out to be the thing that makes ECU special and keeps me here,” she said. “We’re very hands on with the editing. We develop such a relationship with the writers.”

She describes her mission at N.C. Literary Review as two-fold: She aims generally to be an ambassador for North Carolina writers, but also wants to maintain a venue where readers can discover new authors or rediscover neglected or forgotten ones. It requires balance, she explained.

“North Carolina has so many literary stars,” she said. “And they’re so generous.”

Accordingly, the annual review often reaches 200 pages. Bauer led a major redesign of the review in 2009 and also launched an annual online edition in 2012. The online edition offers different works than the print edition, and information about both can be found at http://www.nclr.ecu.edu.

A fascination with literature developed early in Bauer, a native of Louisiana. She remembers reading Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” in high school, and being amazed that her teacher could ascertain so much of a character’s life from only two pages.

“I want to learn how to read like that,” she thought.

Today, she attempts to impart that same love of fiction — and the critical thinking required for comprehending complex literary works — to her students.

“I’m going to be stuck in this head 100 years except when I’m in a novel,” she tells them. “It’s a chance to get out of your head for 400 pages.”

As the Ralph Hardee Rives Chair in Southern Literature, Bauer continues to add to her own body of scholarly works. Her most recent book examines Scarlett O’Hara-type characters in literature, and is slated for release this summer by University of South Carolina Press. Other ongoing projects include getting a critical edition of Paul Green’s play “The House of Connolly” published. She describes the play as “rivaling anything (renowned playwright) Tennessee Williams wrote.”

“I am astounded…by the breadth and depth of her efforts as a scholar and as one actively promoting living writers,” wrote ECU Department of English chair Jeffrey Johnson in his recommendation of Bauer for the lifetime award. “Her record is stamped with her indefatigable spirit, with her unrelenting pursuit of excellence and with the intensity of her infectious energy.”

Bauer credits those around her, from the interns on her review staff to department and university leadership.

“I’ve had a lot of good support,” she said, “and I appreciate that.”

– Kathryn Kennedy