A feature from the Spring 2019 issue.  Hancock’s art, which includes paintings, fabricated toys, a theatrical performance, and a graphic novel, defies categorization and pulses with an almost religious intensity. Much of his work has followed the denizens of his alternate… by Trenton Doyle Hancock and Maurice Carlos Ruffin | Mar, 2019

Enter the Moundverse

 A Letter from the Editor, Summer 2019. At the Oxford American, we receive many pitches for stories in the category of “pilgrimages,” or “literary road trips,” or “retracing X’s steps.” I understand the appeal: the traveler can see with her… by Eliza Borné | Jun, 2019

Color Fields

A Points South essay from the Summer 2019 issue As an evangelist, I have showed “Miracles” to many people by lying about what it’s actually about. Generally, I describe it as a sort of joke, a curiosity. I don’t tell… by Jacob Rosenberg | Jun, 2019

Only Human

An installment in John T. Edge’s Points South column, Local Fare. Calamity and travel arrest time. They beg focus and feed insights. Tourism has taken on some of the functions that religion once served. Here in America, we have ritualized restaurant… by John T. Edge | Mar, 2019

Oaxaca Wreck

A Points South essay from the Spring 2019 issue Like many other locals, I had never valued the glades. I had never learned to see past the scraggly trees and the rocky fields. A chance Google search one day told… by Rachel Louise Martin | Mar, 2019

Some People Stay

A featured short story from the Spring 2019 issue. I understood that he had a crush on me, because there is no service that deserves a greater-than-one-hundred-percent gratuity, but the money seemed harmless when it came out of his wallet,… by Kevin Wilson | Mar, 2019

A Slender Wage

A Points South essay from the Spring 2019 issue I hesitated at the sight of the banner so close to my home and was suddenly wary. Weary. I saw the flag and without thinking thought it code: Patriot. MAGA. Make… by Karen Good Marable | Mar, 2019

Flag Code

An Omnivore essay from the Spring 2019 issue.  Due to his health, Leon Redbone can no longer be interviewed. In a way, he’s become a version of the old-time musicians he so admired, about whom little is known: You can… by Megan Pugh | Mar, 2019

Vessel of Antiquity

Photo by adrian on unsplash
Web Feature

The Hitchhiker from “Emergency”

January 22, 2018

Denis Johnson and revision. 

A couple of years later, I told someone about this, that the hitchhiker in “Emergency” is a real guy with the same name, that I’d watched this remarkable video of Johnson reading the story, and she second-guessed the whole thing. What if, she wondered, the interruption, the anecdote, the letter that Johnson reads is just another version of the story? It all fits together that way, that years later the narrator would be a novelist, that the character he’d almost forgotten was real would walk up and say hello. It feels a little like a final revision.

Bob Dylan - The Rolling Thunder Revue | Available Now
Eureka Springs, Arkansas | Summer Playlist
UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute
OA 2019-2020 Concert Series | Tickets On Sale Now