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 39, May / June 2001
“One of the main reasons I married my ex-husband was because he promised I could raise some chickens. Now, in hindsight, I know that marrying only for the promise of chickens is the wrong reason to get married. But I was young and impressionable.” — Chela Gutierrez, “Prissy”
Previously unpublished fiction by James Dickey. Features by Tessa DeCarlo and Luke Dittrich. Robert Ashford Little remembers his next-door neighbor, William Faulkner. Poetry by Forrest Gander, Michael McFee, and Ron Rash.
Other contribuors include Diane Roberts, Lem Coley, John T. Edge, John Simpkins, and more.
Features
“The Innocent Negro”
The controversial world of outsider art.
By Tessa DeCarlo
Pageants Are My Life
A trip into the strange heart of child beauty pageants.
By Luke Dittrich
Short Story
The Eye of the Fire
A previously unpublished story by the author of Deliverance.
By James Dickey
Departments
Local Fare
An Untidy Pilgrimage
The extravagant adventures of the neglected food writer Eugene Walter.
By John T. Edge
Business
Man’s New Best Friend?
A North Carolina couple wants to donate tiny horses to the blind. Is this a good idea?
By Andrea Cooper
Politics
Behind These City Walls
There are mysteries constructed into the very buildings of Washington, DC.
By Diane Roberts
A Southern Abroad
Space Invaders
A black American explores the murky racial boundaries of South Africa.
By John Simpkins
Animal Life
Prissy
The thrill and savagery of chicken farming.
By Chela Gutierrez
Forum
Stand and Deliver
Friends and colleagues remember James Dickey (1923–1997)
Oral History
Growing Up with Mr. Faulkner
Remembering life next door to a Nobel Prize-winner
Robert Ashford Little as told to T.E. Simmons
Videos
Straight, No Chaser
The unsettling power of Southern Comfort.
By Stewart O’Nan
Book Views
The Conflict Within Ourselves
A Recent biography of Allen Tate chronicles the Fugitive poet’s inner quarrels.
By Lem Coley
Southern Music
Sweetening the Lemon
A new collection polishes the tunes of bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson.
By Tom Piazza
Columns
Meditations for Bad Girls
By Vicki Covington
Dealer’s Choice
By Hal Crowther
Gone Off Up North
By Roy Blount Jr.
Poetry
To Virginia
By Forrest Gander
Spitting
By Michael McFee
The Request
By Ron Rash
Cover: (Left to right) Ensign Charles W. Miller, LTJG. Henry H. Dearing, and LTJG. Bus Alber walking toward their planes on board the USS SARATOGA for the Rabaul raid, 1943. Photo from the National Archives.