June 02, 2009

The Oxford American releases 2009 Best of the South Issue

What is best about the South?  That is the question.

The Oxford American magazine provides the answers in its annual "Best of the South" issue, and the 2009 edition is now available at bookstores and newsstands nationwide, or at www.oxfordamerican.org.

The "Best of the South 2009" issue is packed with things to do and think about, thanks to free-spirited and vibrant writers who know the South and who can illuminate the overlooked with expertise and pizzazz, according to Marc Smirnoff, editor of The Oxford American.

"Our writers search for eternal youth.  They find the best cheese; they honor the best singer to have sung on a Rolling Stones song (not Mick, not Keith, not even Charlie); they rediscover Eudora Welty’s second-funniest story; they travel haunted roads," Smirnoff said.  "They walk-sorry, ski-on water; they rebuild farmhouses; in short, they write very eloquently about people and things and experiences that can shed light on our sometimes baffling, but always rich experience of life in the American South."

The "Best of the South 2009" issue features some amazingly skillful writers, including: Wendy Brenner, George Singleton (in his The OA fiction debut), Michael Parker, Sean Rowe, Hal Crowther, Lolis Eric Elie, Rebecca T. Godwin, John T. Edge, Beth Ann Fennelly, Wright Thompson, Kim Sunée, William Caverlee, Thomas Swick, Alan Grant, Lauren Groff, Keith Pandolfi, Mark Winegardner, Emily Raboteau and Susannah Felts.

"We think this is our best 'Best of the South' issue - it's our fourth," Smirnoff said, "but we’ll leave that for the reader to decide."

ABOUT THE OXFORD AMERICAN

The Oxford American magazine is published by The Oxford American Literary Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization dedicated to promoting literacy and exploring Southern culture through creative endeavor.

Billed as "The Southern Magazine of Good Writing," and "The New Yorker of the South," The Oxford American has won two National Magazine Awards and other high honors since it began publication in 1992.  Its pages have featured original work by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, James Agee, John Grisham, John Updike, Roy Blount, Susan Sontag, Steve Martin, Charles Portis, William F. Buckley, Carson McCullers, William Eggleston, Zora Neale Hurston, and many other distinguished authors and artists, while also discovering and launching the most promising writers in the region.  The New York Times recently stated that The Oxford American "may be the liveliest literary magazine in America."