Oxford American

Oxford American A quarterly literary magazine dedicated to exploring the complexity and vitality of the South. For more information, visit OxfordAmerican.org.

The Oxford American is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization and national magazine dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing, while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Billed as “A Magazine of the South,” it has won four National Magazine Awards and other high honors since it began publication in 1992. The magazine has featured the original work of such

literary powerhouses as Charles Portis, Roy Blount, Jr., ZZ Packer, Donald Harington, Donna Tartt, Ernest J. Gaines, and many other distinguished authors, while also discovering and launching the most promising writers in the region. In 2007, The New York Times stated that the Oxford American “may be the liveliest literary magazine in America.” The Oxford American is committed to the development of young individuals aspiring to work in the publishing industry, and to the production and presentation of multidisciplinary arts events in and around Little Rock, Arkansas. The Oxford American is published from the University of Central Arkansas.

“You guys have to capitalize on what you have. . . . There’s so much energy here, so much magic here and culture here.” ...
06/05/2025

“You guys have to capitalize on what you have. . . . There’s so much energy here, so much magic here and culture here.”

—Sev Ohanian, producer of Sinners, on the significance of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the film was set. Caroline McCoy traveled to the weekend premiere (hosted by Clarksdale Culture Capital ) where a Q&A with Ryan Coogler and others behind the film, led by Aallyah Wright of Capital B , encouraged discussions about the local creative economy.

Dive into the rich culture of the Delta here: https://oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/sinners-comes-home-to-clarksdale

Sipp Talk

Photos: Scott Barretta; Caroline McCoy.

Whitten Sabbatini cites “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers as one source of inspiration for “Another Day...
06/04/2025

Whitten Sabbatini cites “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers as one source of inspiration for “Another Day in Paradise,“ which captures quiet moments across the Hill Country of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

McCullers' novel was first published on this day in 1940!

View more: https://oxfordamerican.org/eyes/people-and-places

From Dollar General workers’ fight for safety and fair pay to the promise and the pitfalls of the Gulf Coast’s bet on hy...
06/03/2025

From Dollar General workers’ fight for safety and fair pay to the promise and the pitfalls of the Gulf Coast’s bet on hydrogen, our latest issue unpacks the unique, fraught, promising, and ever-changing nature of Southern industry. Explore today at the link below!

https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-129-summer-2025

Cover: Two In The Hand, archival pigment print by Zora J Murff.

It is Newsstand Day, which means you can officially get your hands on the Summer Issue at your favorite local bookstore or purchase at OxfordAmericanGoods.org!

Today is Newsstand Day for the Y’all Street Issue! “Hopefully, this issue ignites a dialogue between what have long felt...
06/03/2025

Today is Newsstand Day for the Y’all Street Issue!

“Hopefully, this issue ignites a dialogue between what have long felt to me to be two diametrically opposed worlds—the literary and the corporate.”

—Associate Editor Frederick McKindra introduces the Summer 2025 Issue #129, the Y’all Street Issue, with notes on the tension between business and the humanities. Read more of McKindra’s introduction at the link below.

https://oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/welcome-to-yall-street-inside-the-summer-2025-issue

Art: Self Portrait as the Professor of Astronomy, Miscegenation and Critical Theory at the New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club Center for Graduate Studies, 2008 © Rashid Johnson. Courtesy the artist.

In a brand-new feature, Heather Evans Smith explores the isolation that comes with being a doubter of the faith in a d...
06/02/2025

In a brand-new feature, Heather Evans Smith explores the isolation that comes with being a doubter of the faith in a devoted Southern community. Returning to her Methodist upbringing, she asks, “How is it that some can wholeheartedly embrace traditional faith while the rest of us are left questioning?”

Explore the full visual narrative here: https://oxfordamerican.org/eyes/skipping-sundays

Thoughtful storytelling doesn't happen by chance—it happens by choice. This June, we’re asking YOU to choose the Oxford ...
06/02/2025

Thoughtful storytelling doesn't happen by chance—it happens by choice. This June, we’re asking YOU to choose the Oxford American.

For over 30 years, we’ve championed a simple but radical belief: the South deserves a great magazine—one that embraces contradictions, celebrates creativity, and reflects the region's full complexity.

Thanks to supporters like you, we’ve published unforgettable writing and art, launched creative careers, and brought Southern stories to readers worldwide.

Now you can double your impact. The Whiting Foundation has renewed its support with a $20,000 matching grant for 2025—meaning every dollar you give will be matched 1:1!

Your $50 becomes $100. Your $100 becomes $200.

Ready to amplify Southern storytelling? Visit
https://oxford.app.neoncrm.com/forms/give-2025

“When you do flowers, you accept that your work will not last.”—Through scenes of wired smilax and cascading ranunculus,...
05/31/2025

“When you do flowers, you accept that your work will not last.”—Through scenes of wired smilax and cascading ranunculus, Lee Matalone explores what it means to make ephemeral beauty in a world unraveling.

https://oxfordamerican.org/web-only/the-book-of-flowers

Photo by Bobby Wiggins, courtesy the artist.

Jenn Pelly spent six days on the Waxahatchee tour bus from Alabama to Texas, where Katie Crutchfield recorded her Grammy...
05/30/2025

Jenn Pelly spent six days on the Waxahatchee tour bus from Alabama to Texas, where Katie Crutchfield recorded her Grammy-nominated 2024 album, “Tigers Blood.”

The resulting feature is part career-spanning profile, part road-trip diary, and part full-hearted testament—to the sacred bond of sisterhood, and to the parallel power of meaning and mystery in American art.

Read “Waxahatchee: She Lives for the Sake of the Song” here: https://oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/on-the-road-with-waxahatchee

Photo by Molly Matalon

“Growing up, I had all the spiced and sweetened world at my fingertips, the crumbs from those hand pies freckling my tin...
05/29/2025

“Growing up, I had all the spiced and sweetened world at my fingertips, the crumbs from those hand pies freckling my tiny palms.”

—Rahawa Haile traces the evolution of Miami through the lens of pandebono—a Colombian cheese roll made with cassava starch.

Read more at the link below.

https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-128-spring-2025/on-pandebono-and-the-vanishing-city

Photo: Construction in South Beach II, 2018, a photograph by Anastasia Samoylova © The artist. From her monograph Adaptation, published last year by Thames & Hudson.

“Events like ‘The Archives of The Impossible’ offer the necessary space for researchers, officers, doctors, and programm...
05/28/2025

“Events like ‘The Archives of The Impossible’ offer the necessary space for researchers, officers, doctors, and programmers … to compare notes, share stories, and begin to quietly, collectively reckon with a universe perhaps far stranger than ever imagined.”

—In this new web feature, author and UFO enthusiast Will Clarke attends the 2025 Archives of the Impossible Conference at Rice University and provides an introduction as to why the event, and its speakers, is “intellectually essential.”

Dive into this “intellectual defense of the weird” here: https://oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/inside-rice-university-s-2025-ufo-conference

“Everything is Going to Be All Right,” by Jared Ragland, is a photographic meditation on Walker Percy’s classic novel of...
05/28/2025

“Everything is Going to Be All Right,” by Jared Ragland, is a photographic meditation on Walker Percy’s classic novel of New Orleans, “The Moviegoer.”

Percy was born on this day in 1916, in Birmingham, AL. See more of Ragland’s work at the link below.

https://oxfordamerican.org/eyes/the-moviegoer

Photos: Untitled (Matinee screening of Casablanca, Prytania Theatre, Uptown, New Orleans); Untitled (After Walker Evans’ Movie theater on Saint Charles Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1935/6).

Bob Dylan’s second studio album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” was released on this day in 1963. But what if it wasn’t h...
05/27/2025

Bob Dylan’s second studio album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” was released on this day in 1963. But what if it wasn’t his second album?

In “Think Twice” (Issue 95), Elijah Wald explores an alternate history—one in which Dylan’s follow-up to his debut wasn’t Freewheelin’, but a blues LP composed of tracks that were never commercially released. Traded among hardcore fans, these recordings reveal “an alternate Dylan: not the folky bard of the standard biographies, but the hippest young blues singer in Greenwich Village.”

Revisit this feature at the link below.

https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-95-winter-2016/think-twice

Art: " " (2011), by Abetz & Drescher. Image courtesy the artists and Magic Beans Gallery, Berlin

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