Albright Wins Lifetime Achievement Award

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On November 21st, in Raleigh, Professor Alex Albright accepted the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association's R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award, given in recognition of the recipient's contribution to the preservation and promotion of North Carolina literature--a lifetime achievement award which the youthful Albright has earned, as the citation notes, "before his fiftieth birthday." 

In his already distinguished career, Albright has served as editor, producer, writer, and teacher. He has edited three volumes of poetry with North Carolina themes, and was founding editor of North Carolina Literary Review, an annual magazine focusing on the literature, history, and culture of the Old North State. Under Albright's editorship (1991-96), NCLR won 19 regional, national, and international awards, including the Modern Language Association's "Best New Journal." Today the magazine serves an international subscriber base, with copies sold in bookstores across the country. 

Albright's interests extend to film and theater as well as the printed word. He was instrumental in restoring the historic 1947 film Pitch A Boogie-Woogie, one of North Carolina's first movies with an all-black cast. His documentary about the film, Boogie in Black and White, was shown statewide on WUNC-TV in 1988, during Black History Month. Albright is also the producer and writer of the outdoor musical drama Coming Into Freedom: The End of the Civil War, which starred actress and storyteller Louise Anderson and was performed with the North Carolina Symphony at Somerset Place, in 1990. 

These and many more accomplishments led the Society to recognize Alex Albright as "perhaps his generation's leading promoter of North Carolina Literature, within our state and within the country at large." The citation continues, "Although Alex's accomplishments have already reached 'lifetime achievement' proportions, we gladly anticipate his future contributions to the advancement of North Carolina literature." 

Albright, a native of Graham, NC, joined the Department in 1981 as a lecturer; he is currently a tenured associate professor teaching courses in creative nonfiction, American literature, and North Carolina Studies.