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This Spring, the OA will focus on food.

Through fresh reporting, in-depth profiles, and daring personal essays, this issue will explore what we eat: people, industries, and tastes that both build and challenge our ideas of Southern food.

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Cynthia Shearer

About

Cynthia Shearer is the author of two works of fiction, The Wonder Book of the Air and The Celestial Jukebox, both of which originated as short fiction in the Oxford American. Formerly a curator of William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi, she now lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

Articles

Barry Hannah’s Mixtape

By Cynthia Shearer

Eavesdropping on History

By Cynthia Shearer
Issue 91, Winter 2015

Sugarfoot Stomp

Fletcher was born with the burden of perfect pitch. Whatever the boy heard, he heard as music

By Cynthia Shearer
Features

The Thinning of Big Mama

Thornton makes it clear: she is not unacquainted with human suffering, but she has no intention of letting it get the upper hand.

By Cynthia Shearer
Issue 111, Winter 2020

Celestial Jukebox

One of my first thoughts was of the potential this had to influence American blues, and I was excited at the prospect.

By Cynthia Shearer
Issue 127, Winter 2024

Mae Glover’s Songs and Hoodoo

There’s a story here. We will likely never know the whole of it, but her presence in Memphis is marvelous to consider.

By Cynthia Shearer