Description

Originally published at $12, now out of print.

Includes Elaine Gottlieb’s short story “The Dance at the End of the  War,” which was published in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bombs, in 1945. It begins: “When the bomb fell, Carolyn was being driven down to a small experimental college in North Carolina that had given her a painting scholarship for one summer month.”

Gottlieb, like many who attended BMC, came to the mountains of North Carolina to study one subject but wound up working primarily in another; in her case, the impulse to study art was redirected towards writing fiction. Plans to publish an anthology of her work have not thus far worked out: she remains today one of the most underrated of 20th century American writers. 

Also:

• Tom Patterson’s overview of BMC

• Katherine C. Reynolds’ article on the college’s beginning

• Kinston native Mary Emma Harris’ essay “On Discovering Black Mountain College” and Lyman Gilmore on Joel Oppenheimer

• Also essays, fiction, poetry, and art by several other former BMC students: I.S. Nakata, Irwin Kremen, Mary Parks Washington, Martha King, Basil King, Jonathan Williams, Fielding Dawson, Joel Oppenheimer, Gregory Masurovsky.

• Interviews with Fielding Dawson and Jonathan Williams.

• Paul Metcalf’s essay on his family ties to North Carolina and BMC.

• • • 

Also Michael Parker’s essay “Lake Amnesia,” which closes the issue begun with Gottlieb’s story centered around Lake Eden at Black Mountain College, and a new Ammons poem, two new poems by Peter Makuck, and David Cecelski’s essay on coastal fisherfolk