Celebrate 30 years of the OA.
With original work from Imani Perry, Kristen Arnett, Diane Roberts, and so many others, our Spring Issue honors our past and looks into our expansive future.
Magazine
Issue 100, Spring 2018
Announcing the Oxford American’s 100th Issue!
Our 100th issue includes a new original cover painting by Wayne White, an essay on the Falcon Heavy from National Book Award Finalist Lauren Groff, and a special revival of the OA’s long-running Writing on Writing department, for which seven writers contributed essays celebrating their mentors. A milestone issue that commemorates our history and looks with excitement toward the literary future, we hope our 100th will do what editor Eliza Borné reminds us the OA has always done at its best, and “serve for readers as its own kind of guiding light.”
Contributors include: Nikki Giovanni, Kevin Brockmeier, Randall Kenan, Wendell Berry, Tania James, Tayari Jones, Tift Merritt, and many more.
Editor’s Letter: 100! by Eliza Borné
Points South
It Had to be Memphis, by Benjamin Hedin
A Good Job, a poem by Nikki Giovanni
Medusa, a story by Tania James
Lolis Eric Elie recalls his father’s boyhood home
Alan Huffman tracks the gun that killed Medgar Evers
Reading the Soil, by Christopher Cox
Laine Kaplan-Levenson looks to Haiti during the New Orleans tricentennial
The Fifth Sunday, a story by Clyde Edgerton
Local Fare: The Question of Dinner, by John T. Edge
Features
SABBATHS
poems by Wendell Berry
NIGHT, SLEEP, DEATH AND THE STARS
Waiting for the Falcon Heavy
by Lauren Groff
RESURRECTION HARDWARE
a story by Randall Kenan
FALSE MORELS
a story by Jessi Lewis
THE COST OF CERTAINTY
Evangelicalism in Trump’s America
by Molly McCully Brown
THE STEPHANIES
a story by Thomas Pierce
Writing on Writing
THIS IS YOUR LIFE by Tayari Jones
FIVE GLIMPSES OF DONALD HARINGTON by Kevin Brockmeier
SHIT, WE’RE ALL CONSEQUENCES OF SOMETHING by Crystal Wilkinson
MY SECRET SHARER by Tift Merritt
FREDERICK BARTHELME AND “THE 39 STEPS” by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
WRITE LIKE HELL by Bronwen Dickey
Omnivore
PERFECTLY BORING
Mississippi, murder, and William Eggleston’s “Red Ceiling”
by Will Stephenson
THE KINGDOM OF THE OTHER
On seeing what is to be seen
by James Dickey
Introduction by Tim Gautreaux
Notes by Casey Clabough
Cooking with Chris:
THE ECHO OF AN ECHO IS AN ECHO’S ETCETERA
by Chris Offutt
Art by Wayne White, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Isabella Weston, Tom Martin, Lorna Simpson, Ayo Scott, Jennifer Shaw, John Chiara, Gwynne Johnson, Didier William, Lauren Pond, Kerry James Marshall, Irene Imfeld, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Laura Plageman, Liza Ryan, Jonathan Gardner, Eleanor Davis, William Eggleston, Amy Friend, Douglas Bourgeois
Cover: “100!” (2018), by Wayne White for the Oxford American
Editor’s Letter: 100! by Eliza Borné
Points South
It Had to be Memphis, by Benjamin Hedin
A Good Job, a poem by Nikki Giovanni
Medusa, a story by Tania James
Lolis Eric Elie recalls his father’s boyhood home
Alan Huffman tracks the gun that killed Medgar Evers
Reading the Soil, by Christopher Cox
Laine Kaplan-Levenson looks to Haiti during the New Orleans tricentennial
The Fifth Sunday, a story by Clyde Edgerton
Local Fare: The Question of Dinner, by John T. Edge
Features
SABBATHS
poems by Wendell Berry
NIGHT, SLEEP, DEATH AND THE STARS
Waiting for the Falcon Heavy
by Lauren Groff
RESURRECTION HARDWARE
a story by Randall Kenan
FALSE MORELS
a story by Jessi Lewis
THE COST OF CERTAINTY
Evangelicalism in Trump’s America
by Molly McCully Brown
THE STEPHANIES
a story by Thomas Pierce
Writing on Writing
THIS IS YOUR LIFE by Tayari Jones
FIVE GLIMPSES OF DONALD HARINGTON by Kevin Brockmeier
SHIT, WE’RE ALL CONSEQUENCES OF SOMETHING by Crystal Wilkinson
MY SECRET SHARER by Tift Merritt
FREDERICK BARTHELME AND “THE 39 STEPS” by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
WRITE LIKE HELL by Bronwen Dickey
Omnivore
PERFECTLY BORING
Mississippi, murder, and William Eggleston’s “Red Ceiling”
by Will Stephenson
THE KINGDOM OF THE OTHER
On seeing what is to be seen
by James Dickey
Introduction by Tim Gautreaux
Notes by Casey Clabough
Cooking with Chris:
THE ECHO OF AN ECHO IS AN ECHO’S ETCETERA
by Chris Offutt
Art by Wayne White, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Isabella Weston, Tom Martin, Lorna Simpson, Ayo Scott, Jennifer Shaw, John Chiara, Gwynne Johnson, Didier William, Lauren Pond, Kerry James Marshall, Irene Imfeld, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Laura Plageman, Liza Ryan, Jonathan Gardner, Eleanor Davis, William Eggleston, Amy Friend, Douglas Bourgeois
Cover: “100!” (2018), by Wayne White for the Oxford American