Issue 100, Spring 2018

Announcing the Oxford American’s 100th Issue!

Our 100th issue includes a new original cover painting by Wayne White, an essay on the Falcon Heavy from National Book Award Finalist Lauren Groff, and a special revival of the OA’s long-running Writing on Writing department, for which seven writers contributed essays celebrating their mentors. A milestone issue that commemorates our history and looks with excitement toward the literary future, we hope our 100th will do what editor Eliza Borné reminds us the OA has always done at its best, and “serve for readers as its own kind of guiding light.”

Contributors include: Nikki Giovanni, Kevin Brockmeier, Randall Kenan, Wendell Berry, Tania James, Tayari Jones, Tift Merritt, and many more.

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Editor’s Letter: 100! by Eliza Borné

Points South

It Had to be Memphis, by Benjamin Hedin

A Good Job, a poem by Nikki Giovanni

Medusa, a story by Tania James

Lolis Eric Elie recalls his father’s boyhood home

Eggs, a story by Mary Miller

Alan Huffman tracks the gun that killed Medgar Evers

Reading the Soil, by Christopher Cox

Laine Kaplan-Levenson looks to Haiti during the New Orleans tricentennial

The Fifth Sunday, a story by Clyde Edgerton

Local Fare: The Question of Dinner, by John T. Edge

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Features

SABBATHS
poems by Wendell Berry

NIGHT, SLEEP, DEATH AND THE STARS
Waiting for the Falcon Heavy
by Lauren Groff

RESURRECTION HARDWARE
a story by Randall Kenan 

FALSE MORELS
a story by Jessi Lewis

THE COST OF CERTAINTY
Evangelicalism in Trump’s America
by Molly McCully Brown

THE STEPHANIES
a story by Thomas Pierce

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Writing on Writing

THIS IS YOUR LIFE by Tayari Jones

FIVE GLIMPSES OF DONALD HARINGTON by Kevin Brockmeier

SHIT, WE’RE ALL CONSEQUENCES OF SOMETHING by Crystal Wilkinson

MY SECRET SHARER by Tift Merritt

FREDERICK BARTHELME AND “THE 39 STEPS” by Pia Z. Ehrhardt

WRITE LIKE HELL by Bronwen Dickey

READ MY WORLD by Jamey Hatley

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Omnivore

PERFECTLY BORING
Mississippi, murder, and William Eggleston’s “Red Ceiling”
by Will Stephenson

THE KINGDOM OF THE OTHER
On seeing what is to be seen
by James Dickey
Introduction by Tim Gautreaux
Notes by Casey Clabough

Cooking with Chris:
THE ECHO OF AN ECHO IS AN ECHO’S ETCETERA
by Chris Offutt

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Art by Wayne White, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Isabella Weston, Tom Martin, Lorna Simpson, Ayo Scott, Jennifer Shaw, John Chiara, Gwynne Johnson, Didier William, Lauren Pond, Kerry James Marshall, Irene Imfeld, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Laura Plageman, Liza Ryan, Jonathan Gardner, Eleanor Davis, William Eggleston, Amy Friend, Douglas Bourgeois

 

Cover: “100!” (2018), by Wayne White for the Oxford American