March 01, 2010

The Oxford American Releases Its Second-Ever Southern Food Issue

The Oxford American, a leading national literary and cultural magazine, today released its second-ever Southern Food issue.

The first Southern Food issue, published in 2005, was guest edited by The Oxford American's food columnist, John T. Edge, who is director of the Southern Foodways Alliance.  Edge again is the guest editor of the second Southern Food issue, and now he is a recent James Beard Award winner and also writes the "United Tastes" column for The New York Times.

"For those of us who live to eat, these are hopeful times," Edge writes in his guest editor's note.

The Oxford American's 2010 Southern Food issue attempts to gaze past mere nostalgia and onto a new horizon of Southern cuisine.  Amidst the South's changing economic and cultural landscapes, The OA's contributing writers reflect on past cooking traditions and take stock of new trends for a better understanding of our connection to food and the people and places that cultivate it.

Highlights in the issue include: the food critic Todd Kliman on the trail of Peter Chang, an elusive Chinese chef whose Szechuan dishes inspire adoration, cross-country pilgrimages, Internet stalking, and other strange behaviors; Atlanta culinary guru John Kessler on three African-American chefs whose haute soul cuisine blends old and new traditions and breaks unspoken barriers; Diane Roberts's testimonial to the perfect cake; Lolis Eric Elie on the controversial subject of Creole cuisine's heritage; Jack Hitt's taste-test of homemade beef jerky from around the South; Beth Ann Fennelly on eating ... dirt; and Brett Anderson's profile of a white sushi savant in Texas. The Southern Food issue also debuts "The OA Manual of Good Taste," a collection of insightful pieces to inform the curious gastronome about the South's new best-kept secrets, like Nashville chocolate, MoonPie-flavored beer, and some of the most delectable on-the-go Southern meals in Southern California.

The Oxford American will premiere the new Southern Food issue in Charleston with two events on Saturday, March 6, in conjunction with the BB&T Charleston Wine + Food Festival.  Additional events will take place in Atlanta, New York, and New Orleans.  Details about all of the Southern Food issue events are available on a dedicated website at: http://food.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."