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.

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Magazine


Issue 93, Summer 2016

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?







Points South

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


Poetry

Three Poems by Kwame Dawes

Work, Time, Past Fifty


Southern Journeys
TRAVELS THROUGH SPACE AND TIME

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


Features

SPLIT
by Clay Byars

THE BALLAD OF HARLAN COUNTY
by Elyssa East

NEWLYWEDS
a story by Eric Boehling Lewis


Omnivore

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