“Our charge is to share important, moving stories with you, our readers, from a region that is still oft-overlooked and maligned,” writes editor Eliza Borné in an introduction to this issue, which marks the Oxford American’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
Some highlights: An excerpt from Jesmyn Ward’s forthcoming novel; photographs by Jack Spencer; a previously unpublished poem by Margaret Walker, with an introduction by Kiese Laymon; an examination of Guy Davenport by Brian Blanchfield; Rien Fertel on the Mardi Gras flambeaux carriers—and much more.
Editor’s Letter: Truth in Stories, by Eliza Borné
Straighten Up and Fly Right, a story by Glenn Taylor
Linda B. Blackford on the black horsemen of Kentucky
Palm Beach Van Dyck, by Nicole Pasulka
Ed McClanahan inhabits a Lexington streetscape
Witness, three micro-memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
This Land, photographs by Jack Spencer
C. Morgan Babst confronts a flood of emotion after the storm
Local Fare: On Crawfish Boats and Taco Baskets, by John T. Edge
The Confession, by Morri Creech
Darkling, I listen—, by Safiya Sinclair
AN ELEGIAC VALEDICTORY
Celebrating “a dozen wonderful writers”
by Margaret Walker
Introduction by Kiese Laymon
Cover: “Starfall,” St. Augustine, Florida (2008), by Jack Spencer, from This Land