Southern Lights

In the world of literary journals and little magazines, the Carolina Quarterly is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the South. Founded in 1948 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the magazine has published many luminaries of modern and contemporary literature, including Robert Morgan, Evie Shockley, Joyce Carol Oates, Doris Betts, and others. This anthology gathers some of the best work from the last three-quarters of a century, along with an informative essay about the journal’s history and impact. The volume reminds us of the ways small literary journals reflect the voices of their region and changed the literary landscape. This work reaches beyond the imagined boundaries of a single university or single state. Thus the anthology also celebrates a form—the student-run literary journal—that has shaped the regional and national conversation and reflects the astounding accomplishment of the Carolina Quarterly over the past seventy-five years.