An essay from our forthcoming place issue At her restaurant, Mosquito Supper Club, and in her cookbook of the same name, Melissa Martin sets out to record the foods and recipes that cannot be found on New Orleans’s restaurant menus… by Leslie Pariseau | Jul, 2020

Hunger for the Water

A feature essay from the Spring 2020 issue. I moved to Texas in 2017 and returned often to Dilley. When I would chat with residents—after a city council meeting, at the nail salon, before a cook-off—they’d ask if I was… by Emily Gogolak | Mar, 2020

An Intersection at the End…

A feature essay from the Spring 2020 issue. I wasn’t sure how to explain to a rising high-school junior why I’d followed her and her classmates to Belize. I’d met Pierre-Floyd a few months before during a tour of Frederick… by Casey Parks | Mar, 2020

Sense of Strength

A short story from the Spring 2020 issue I tell him goodbye and go wander around the beauty section in Dillard’s. I find the perfume like what I’m wearing on display and I spray some more on. I find a… by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips | Feb, 2020

The Virgin

A feature essay from the Spring 2020 issue. History is, in part, the memories we choose to protect and reinforce, to ensure their longevity and influence. In Thibodaux’s protected memory, sugarcane has endured, plantations have endured, Confederate heroes have endured—but… by Rosemary Westwood | Mar, 2020

Persons Unknown

A Points South essay from the Spring 2020 issue When we weren’t whizzing through intersections, I was trying to read road signs, thinking that their letters, dimly lit by our headlights, would give me some kind of orientation on this… by Malinda Maynor Lowery | Mar, 2020

Career Girl Meets Rock Star

A featured short story from the Spring 2020 issue. She stopped short. The dogs would have passed without noticing her, but Seth had to give them a parting yap. In a second they wheeled around and came straight at her,… by Ben Fountain | Mar, 2020

Cane Creek

 A Letter from the Editor, Spring 2020. Over the years, I have come to admire a certain kind of story that the Oxford American, as a quarterly magazine untethered from the demands of a rapid news cycle, is especially well… by Eliza Borné | Mar, 2020

The Messy Middle

We would like to hear from you.  The magazine will begin publishing letters to the editor in the fall issue and going forward. If you would like to respond to a story published in the magazine, we welcome your letter. by Oxford American | Jun, 2019

Write to the Oxford American

Willie Nelson's "First Rose of Spring"—Available Now

David Katzenstein

David Katzenstein is a New York City–based photographer who has spent over thirty years working on documentary projects in more than fifty countries. A keen interest in music and musicians’ lives has taken him on assignments to far off lands and nearby boroughs, and his knowledge of the world and ability to adapt to different cultures is matched by his love of people, his sense of humor, and his desire to show positive aspects of all cultures.
House party at Junior Kimbrough’s. All photographs by David Katzenstein, courtesy of the artist
Photo Essay

Roots of the Blues

March 01, 2017

Travels with Robert Palmer: photographs from the Delta. 

What became clear as we began our journey together, searching for the roots of the blues, was that the music is part of the Delta landscape and the people we encountered were carrying on an important tradition that spanned many decades. My goal was to visually depict their lives and their love of the musical tradition in which they lived.

Explore Kathryn Keller at LeMieux Galleries
Delta Roots Music Festival | A Tribute to Levon Helm
Join the Oxford American Society