The R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award is given in recognition of the recipient's contribution to the preservation and promotion of North Carolina Literature, a lifetime achievement award which Alex Albright has earned before his fiftieth birthday.
A native of Graham, North Carolina and graduate of Graham High School in 1969, Alex Albright received his BA in journalism/English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1972. Alex then studied with Fred Chappell at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he received his MFA in 1975.
After leaving UNC Greensboro, Alex worked in public relations in Rocky Mount, and in retail books in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Gastonia, and Athens, GA.
He went on to teach public school in New Orleans, moving to Greenville in 1981, where he joined the English faculty at East Carolina University. Alex is now an associate professor at ECU, teaching creative nonfiction, American literature, and North Carolina studies. He resides in Greenville with his wife, Elizabeth Edgerton. They have recently bought the Smith Yelverton building in downtown Fountain, North Carolina, although he's not yet sure why or what he's going to do with it.
Alex has taught creative writing in county prisons in Athens, GA and Williamston, NC, and in the state penitentiary in Raleigh.
Alex has edited three collections of poetry, including Leaves of Greens: the Collard Poems, co-edited by Luke Whisnant, and The North Carolina Poems by A. R. Ammons.
Alex was the founding editor of the North Carolina Literary Review, "an annual magazine of literature, history, and culture," which he edited from 1991-96. Under Alex's editorship, the NCLR was named Best New Journal by the MLA in 1994. In addition to this honor, the North Carolina Literary Review has won 18 national, international, and regional awards, including an Award of Excellence from the University and College Designers Association, and Best in Show for Magazines/Journals from Aldus Magazine , for volume 1, number 1. The NCLR was featured in The 100 Show: The Sixteenth Annual Design Year in Review international exhibit, and won the top award, Miscellaneous Journals Gallery of Excellence, for volume 1, number 2. The NCLR was named the Best New Journal by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals and awarded the Certificate of Excellence by the Supon Design Group for volume 2, number 1. In 1995 the NCLR won the Gold Medal in Graphic Design from the Creative Club of Atlanta, a Judge's Choice from the Type Director's Club, and an award for Design Excellence (Print) for volume 2, number 2.
The North Carolina Literary Review , boasting content and contributors with clear North Carolina connections, serves an international subscriber base and is sold in bookstores across the country.
Alex wrote and produced the UNC-TV documentary Boogie in Black and White, based on his restoration of the 1947 black-cast musical comedy featurette Pitch a Boogie Woogie, which was filmed in Greenville, NC.
Alex also wrote and produced the Department of Cultural Resource's production Coming Into Freedom: The End of the Civil War, an outdoor musical drama starring Louise Anderson with the North Carolina Symphony.
He has served as a consultant and research assistant for documentary films on Buckminster Fuller, Moms Mabley, the Memphis blues scene, contemporary piedmont blues performers, and the history of UNC-Chapel Hill.
Alex has published reviews, articles, essays and creative nonfiction in a variety of publications, including American Film Review, Black Film Review, Living Blues, the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Kerouac at the Wild Boar, and the anthologies Good Country People and Dream Garden: The Poetic Vision of Fred Chappell.
Since "retiring" from the NCLR, Alex has focused much of his attention on the creative writing and North Carolina studies programs at East Carolina University, where he continues to be an inspiration to his students and colleagues. He is currently involved in an exhaustive survey of traveling black Vaudeville entertainers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an outgrowth of his research on Boogie in Black and White.
Alex Albright, perhaps his generation's leading promoter of North Carolina Literature, within our state and within the country at large, is recognized tonight with the R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award for his service to North Carolina. Although Alex's accomplishments have already reached "lifetime achievement" proportions, we gladly anticipate his future contributions to the advancement of North Carolina literature.