June 01, 2010

The Oxford American Releases 2010 Best of the South Issue

Just in time for the heat: The Oxford American's "Best of the South" Issue featuring our annual guide to everything you want to know about the South.  Best haunted hotel?  Best tourist trap?  Best legs?  Best bird?  Best cup?  Best horse?  Best puppeteer?  Best fan?  Yup, this is the issue for you.

Also, John T. Edge finds truthiness in community cookbooks, Hal Crowther rips the covers off adulterous Southern politicians, and humorist Jack Pendarvis names the "Best" of everything we forgot to mention.

Of course, there's more: George Singleton finds sushi where you'd least expect, Diane Roberts meets some gun-toting environmentalists, William Caverlee recalls the tale of a mermaid in Biloxi, and we take life lessons from Dr. Love, a princely street personality in New Orleans.

"We're also proud to present new fiction from newcomer Matthew Neill Null and the literary lioness Elizabeth Spencer," said Marc Smirnoff, editor of The Oxford American. "Each story will make for great poolside reading—or indoor reading for the heat-impaired."

Other contributors to the new "Best of the South" Issue include: Kevin Brockmeier, David Ramsey, William Bowers, Sharon Stone (her first published work), Maud Newton, Jamie Quatro, the Land Brothers, John Holman, Beth Ann Fennelly, Diann Blakely, and Dale Ray Phillips.  And many more!

The Oxford American's "Best of the South" Issue will appear on newsstands nationwide in early June.

Select articles from the new issue are available free in their entirety at oxfordamerican.org.

ABOUT THE OXFORD AMERICAN

The Oxford American is a national magazine based in Arkansas that is dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Billed as "The Southern Magazine of Good Writing," it has won two 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. The magazine has also published previously unseen work by such Southern masters as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, James Agee, Zora Neale Hurston, James Dickey, Carson McCullers, to name just a handful. The New York Times recently stated that The Oxford American "may be the liveliest literary magazine in America."