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.
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.
The Oxford American’s 93rd issue features a special section, Southern Journeys: Travels through Space and Time.
From the introduction: “If ‘travel writing’ is a discrete genre, it is also an instruction to go someplace, engage, and report back: Travel, writing.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Lauren Groff finds beauty in the once-lost portraits of a Miami Beach photographer; Elyssa East wrestles with the painful legacy of her Harlan County, Kentucky, mining family; and John T. Edge shares his celebrated foodways column, “Local Fare,” with Nigerian-born restaurateur Tunde Wey, as they confront the provocative topic, “Who Owns Southern Food?”
Florida springs eternal for Diane Roberts
Blaise St. Clair, a story by Rebecca Wells
Phil McCausland learns the art of distillation
Choke Chains, a story by Kalisha Buckhanon
David Searcy meditates on the mournfulness of cities
J. M. Martin on the secret history of “Let’s Get It On”
Grandmother, Revisited, a story by Manuel Gonzales
Local Fare:
Who Owns Southern Food?
by John T. Edge and Tunde Wey
SKYLINE DRIVE
The highway that led my grandfather into the mountains
by Lavinia Jones Wright
SPINNING IN SPACE
A cross spider adapts to microgravity
by Elena Passarello
PLACES THAT HAVE NO NAMES
El Paso to Lynchburg by train
by Holly Haworth
BLOODY HIGHWAY 90
Homage to a Louisiana back road
by Rien Fertel
STEAL AWAY
Leaving Arkansas for good
a story by Daniel Black
RAVAGED BEAUTY
Cumberland Island, wild but changing
by Megan Mayhew Bergman
THE LAST FLORIDA INDIANS WILL NOW DIE
The westward plight of the Apalachee
by Justin Nobel
IN THE COMPANY OF GOOD THINGS
Tailing Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes across the South
by Yuval Taylor
THE BALLAD OF HARLAN COUNTY
by Elyssa East
NEWLYWEDS
a story by Eric Boehling Lewis
THE BRIGHTEST STILL THE FLEETEST
Andy Sweet’s Miami Beach
by Lauren Groff
Cooking with Chris:
SAVORY DEVIATE DELIGHT
by Chris Offutt
Art by Ben Sklar, Jack Spencer, Selina Román, Chas Rowe, Allison Jarek, Clare Leighton, Louviere + Vanessa, John Chiara, Winfred Rembert, Henry Taylor, Brandon Thibodeaux, James Ostrer, Meg Griffiths, Josh Verduzco, Cig Harvey, Megan Cump, McNair Evans, Scott Daniel Ellison, Dale Niles, Sarah Hadley, Eric Ogden, Tom Martin, Bob Howard, Mike Reddy, Andy Sweet, Christopher Rodriguez
Cover: Photo by Ben Sklar