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 92, Spring 2016
“The OA has always published vital, important stories—from the borderlands, the Gulf Coast, Appalachia, and many locales in between,” editor Eliza Borné writes in this issue. “Our writers continue to thrill me with their creativity and craft.”
Some highlights: Will Stephenson’s evaluation of the Texas-born writer Terry Southern; Alex Mar’s meditation on ancestry and her connection to Juan Ponce de León; fiction by Crystal Wilkinson and C. E. Morgan; a report from the rural Mississippi hometown of author Lewis Nordan; poetry by C. D. Wright, Tyehimba Jess, and Bianca Lynne Spriggs; and more.
Letter from the Editor, by Eliza Borné
Points South
You Dumb Bell, by James Seay
Peter Andrey Smith remembers a pioneering surgeon
La Belle Rivière, a story by C. E. Morgan
Matt Wolfe chases cattle rustlers in Texas
Four micromemoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
David McDannald confronts a llama
Local Fare: Road Tripping with Nathalie Dupree, by John T. Edge
Features
ONCE WAS LOST
photographs by Richard Leo Johnson
poem by C. D. Wright
BLOOD TIES
Conjuring up my own personal conquistador
by Alex Mar
THE THUNDER AND THE HURRICANE
A team comes home
by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
A HOUSE OF CROSSED LOGS
Finding Lewis Nordan
by John McElwee
with Chris Fowler
SKY. BLOOD. BONE. BREATH.
a story by Crystal Wilkinson
Omnivore
THE STATE OF THE PLATE
Fetishizing Fiestaware
by Kelly Alexander
NIGHTS OF TERROR, DAYS OF WEIRD
Terry Southern’s life in letters
by Will Stephenson
Cooking with Chris:
A BIRD IN HAND IS WORTH NOTHING TO THE BIRD
by Chris Offutt
Poetry
General James Bethune and John Bethune Introduce Blind Tom, by Tyehimba Jess
Discipline, by Phillip B. Williams
Night on Rand Avenue, by Bianca Lynne Spriggs
Art by Jo Ann Callis, Camilo Ramirez, Akasha Rabut, Norwood Creech, Holly Andres, Molly Lamb, Tatum Shaw, Karen Glaser, Andrew Moore, Willie Anne Wright, James H. Evans, Najee Dorsey, Joshua Flint, Richard Leo Johnson, Aaron Canipe, Hannah Cooper McCauley, Rebecca Reeve, Tom Martin, Donald Baechler, Chris Fowler, Albert Chong, Krista Steinke, Jan De Vliegher, Cara Barer, Yola Monakhov Stockton
Cover: “The Dish Trick” (1985), by Jo Ann Callis. Courtesy of the artist and ROSEGALLERY