I found this story last night in the Charlotte Observer, in which two NCSU professors discuss the state of the Southern accent in Raleigh. I’ll say more about the Southern voice in the next newsletter, so for now I’ll just mention that this article doesn’t take into sufficient account the fact that there is no single Southern accent or dialect. People with roots in eastern NC say different words with different inflections than those from western NC.
This blog discusses reviewers and reviewing from a publisher’s point of view, and singles out our own beloved Nicki Leone as a “reviewer who consistently captures my attention with her sharp wit and excellent analysis.” Well, duh.
Banu Valladares of the North Carolina Arts Council forwarded this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, which asks hard questions about criticism, the Western canon, what makes a work good, and what makes reading worthwhile. I told someone recently that, in my opinion, North Carolina has largely succeeded at building a supportive community for writers, and that the next step we should take is to develop a stronger critical function, to demand excellence from ourselves and other writers.
But be nice about it.