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 96, Spring 2017
“Our charge is to share important, moving stories with you, our readers, from a region that is still oft-overlooked and maligned,” writes editor Eliza Borné in an introduction to this issue, which marks the Oxford American’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
Some highlights: An excerpt from Jesmyn Ward’s forthcoming novel; photographs by Jack Spencer; a previously unpublished poem by Margaret Walker, with an introduction by Kiese Laymon; an examination of Guy Davenport by Brian Blanchfield; Rien Fertel on the Mardi Gras flambeaux carriers—and much more.
Editor’s Letter: Truth in Stories, by Eliza Borné
Points South
Straighten Up and Fly Right, a story by Glenn Taylor
Linda B. Blackford on the black horsemen of Kentucky
Palm Beach Van Dyck, by Nicole Pasulka
Ed McClanahan inhabits a Lexington streetscape
Witness, three micro-memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
This Land, photographs by Jack Spencer
C. Morgan Babst confronts a flood of emotion after the storm
Local Fare: On Crawfish Boats and Taco Baskets, by John T. Edge
Poetry
The Confession, by Morri Creech
Darkling, I listen—, by Safiya Sinclair
Features
AN ELEGIAC VALEDICTORY
Celebrating “a dozen wonderful writers”
by Margaret Walker
Introduction by Kiese Laymon
THE YEAR OF THE HEAVY MOON
Seeking joy in a time of despair
by Michelle García
THE KEEPERS OF THE LIGHT
Mardi Gras’s flambeaux: a complicated history
by Rien Fertel
FLAYED
a story by Jesmyn Ward
Excerpted from Sing, Unburied, Sing
Omnivore
WAYNE HALL 0.1
Mystic art assembled from Corsicana’s dross
by David Searcy
Cooking with Chris:
CHICKEN CORDON BLUE BLOODS
by Chris Offutt
Art by Jack Spencer, Rose Marie Cromwell, Ansen Seale, Rachel Boillot, Ben Nixon, Lee Deigaard, Ralph Wolfe Cowan, Linda Foard Roberts, Guy Mendes, Frank Relle, William Widmer, Carl Van Vechten, Coke Wisdom O’Neal, Tamara Reynolds, Alma Thomas, Vincent Valdez, Skip Bolen, Noel Camardo, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Andy Kropa
Cover: “Starfall,” St. Augustine, Florida (2008), by Jack Spencer, from This Land