Tar Balls are rolling onto beaches in Gulf again, stirred up by Tropical Storm Lee. This is a messy fact for those who have bought into the national, and corporate, narrative and who have consigned the story to the past tense. According to that narrative the spill ended a year ago, on September 19th, when BP's Macondo oil well was declared officially capped, sealed, "dead."
Karen Dalton: Prickly Like a Rose (from The Oxford American 9th Annual Southern Music Issue, 2007)
Mike Brodie arrived in West Hollywood for his first major photography show dressed in a sleeveless Japanther shirt he hadn’t washed in two years.
A photo recap of the best week of our lives. Bet you wish you were there!
Any piece of writing not edited with care and insight can be the equivalent of viewing an object through smudged glass. William Whitworth, editor emeritus of The Atlantic Monthly, and former writer and editor for The New Yorker, exemplifies the best in editorial subtlety, brainpower, and grace. On June 22, 2011, Mr. Whitworth joined OA editor Marc Smirnoff for an on-stage discussion at the debut of The Oxford American's Summit for Ambitious Writers.
William Whitworth, Pico Iyer, & David Remnick visit Winthrop Rockefeller Institute in Arkansas in June of 2011. This interview series, part of The Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers at Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, presents leading editors and writers in conversation with Oxford American editor Marc Smirnoff. These interviews are open to the public at no cost, but registration is required. For more information, please visit summit.oxfordamerican.org.
The Island, from THE OXFORD AMERICAN FUTURE ISSUE, by Josh Neufeld and Sari Wilson.
A few years before Barry Hannah's death, he and John Oliver Hodges took a drive around Tuscaloosa talking love, motorcycles, and writing. "Barry read 'Constant Pain in Tuscaloosa,' at the Bama Theatre," recalls Hodges. "While in town we tooled around a bit, and I made this video, even though I could barely press the gas pedal due to a mysterious and sudden arthritic condition. On the drive back to Oxford we had planned to empty the guns into the Black Warrior River. That never happened, but 'Dr. Hannah' did give me one of his neuropathy pills, which of itself was quite the remarkable experience."
Current Alabama music-makers our keen ears highly recommend.
The OA asks musicians, critics and record nuts about the best music and moments in 'Bama's recorded history.
The month-long IMPROVISOR FESTIVAL in Birmingham and other national hot spots.
Samuel Mockbee's Vision in an Invisible World from THE OXFORD AMERICAN, The Hidden South Issue #41 (fall 2001)
OXFORD AMERICAN film award debuts at the Little Rock Film Festival.
Southern lit, heated up.
For you they've waited.
