North Carolina Literary Review - James Applewhite Poetry Virtual Reading
Join us on April 14, 2021 as recipients of the 2020 James Applewhite Poetry Prize read their submissions live on Zoom. Produced since 1992 at East Carolina University, the North Carolina Literary Review has won numerous awards and citations. James Applewhite Poetry Prize was created in 2011 to honor the renowned North Carolina poet. The first Applewhite prize winner was published in NCLR in 2012.
Individuals requesting accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should contact the ADA coordinator at least 48 hours prior to the event at 252-737-1018 / ada-coordinator@ecu.edu
The deadline for the 2021 James Applewhite Poetry Prize competition is April 30, 2021. The winner receives $250 and publication in NCLR. Finalists will also be considered for publication. See the competition guidelines for more information on the NCLR website.
2020 James Applewhite Poetry Prize Recipients
Keely Hendricks
A native of Nashville, TN, Keely Hendricks is the first-place recipient of the 2020 James Applewhite Poetry Prize. She is a recent graduate from the UNC Chapel Hill, where she earned a BA English literature and French, with a concentration in creative writing. She is looking forward to teaching at Nashville’s Jewish Middle School this fall and then in Senegal with the Fulbright program next year.
Final judge (and North Carolina Poet Laureate) Jaki Shelton Green described her winning selection as “atmospherically rich with a delicate musicality . . . resplendent in masterful imagery.” This was Hendricks’s first time submitting her poetry for NCLR’s competition, as well as her first time to submit her poetry for publication consideration.
Gideon Young
Second place winner, Gideon Young, is a member of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective and the Carrboro Poets Council. He is a co-author of One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku (Unicorn Press, 2017), which won the Haiku Society of America Merit Award for Best Anthology. He has poems forthcoming in Acorn Haiku and Kingfisher. He is a Teaching Fellow for A+ Schools of North Carolina and a stay-at-home dad.
David E. Poston
2020’s Applewhite third place winner, David E. Poston’s work has appeared most recently in Atlanta Review, Pedestal Magazine, Flying South, and moonShine review. His latest poetry collection is Slow of Study (Main Street Rag, 2015; reviewed in NCLR Online 2017). He lives in Gastonia, NC, where he teaches occasional writing workshops for Hospice and other venues and serves as a co-editor of Main Street Rag’s Kakalak.
Jodi Barnes
Jodi Barnes has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, Camroc Press Review, Prime Number Magazine, 100 Word Story, WALTER, Wigleaf Top 50, and Fictionaut Editor’s Eye. She received the Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction in 2014, and in 2010 she was runner-up for the Oscar Arnold Young Award. She currently resides in Athens, GA. She was named Honorable Mention in the 2020 Applewhite Poetry Prize.
Terri Greco
Terri Greco, whose poem is an Honorable Mention in the 2020 James Applewhite Poetry Prize, is a poet and psychotherapist living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her husband and son. Her poems have appeared in various print and online journals and anthologies. She was a Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished adult student poet 2017–2018 and received an award of Honorable Mention for her poem “Living” in Main Street Rag’s 2019 Kakalak contest.