The North Carolina Literary Review has included African American writers of North Carolina since the first issue, but the 2019 issue features North Carolina African American Literature, from award-winning contemporary fiction writer Stephanie Powell Watts back to the enslaved poet George Moses Horton. In between, readers will find interviews with novelist Jason Mott, poet Glenis Redmond, and 2018 North Carolina Hall of Fame inductee Randall Kenan; poetry by Redmond, L. Teresa Church, Kevin Dublin, and Amber Flora Thomas; and essays on C. Eric Lincoln, Charles Chesnutt, and Harriet Jacobs. Among the scholars analyzing these writers is Dr. Trudier Harris, formerly the J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, now University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Alabama.

Throughout this section, content is complemented by African American art of North Carolina, including works by the late John Biggers and Ivey Hayes and contemporary artists like Monique Luck and Antoine Williams.

Rebecca Duncan and Lyn Triplett reintroduce journalist-poet Zoe Kincaid Brockman in the Flashbacks section of the issue, which also includes poetry by James Applewhite and the winning poem of the 2018 James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition by Catherine Carter, and an essay on and a recollection of. The North Carolina Miscellany section includes the winning essay in NCLR’s 2018 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize competition by Nancy Werking Poling, the winning essay of the North Carolina Humanities Council’s 2018 Linda Flowers Literary Award by Jennifer Brown, and the second place Applewhite Prize poem by Sally Thomas. More finalists from NCLR’s 2018 James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition can be found throughout the issue.

This issue is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources.