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.
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.
“What should emerge from this bacchanal is a sense of how and why what we eat and drink matters.” — John T. Edge
Featuring a previously unpublished essay by Carson McCullers. “Odes” by Padgett Powell, Molly Giles, Donald Harington, Steve Almond, Yusef Komunyakaa, Joshua Foer, and more. Notes by Duncan Murrell and Pete Wells. Essays by Gary Hawkins, Lolis Eric Elie, David Ramsey, Barbara Ensrud, and more.
Other contributors include Debbie Fleming Caffery, Blair Hobbs, Jonathan Reynolds, Anne Mendelson, and others.
Guest Editor’s Box:
A Worthy Cause
Writing—and fighting—about food.
by John T. Edge
Messages from the Front
Cliff’s Meat Market, Squirrel hunting, and more
with Wells Tower, Keith O'Brien, Lawrence Wilson, John T. Edge, Jeff Baker
Meditations:
The Endurance of Southern Food
by John Egerton
Meditations:
Sitting Down to Eat
by Bernard LaFayette, Jr.
Gone Off Up North:
One Man's Fried Meat
by Roy Blount, Jr.
In Florida:
Spanish Dixie
by Diane Roberts
Field Notes:
Animal Farming
by Pete Wells
Field Notes:
Pig Sins: A Love Story
by Duncan Murrell
Field Notes:
Strange Fruit
by Ben Phelan
Meditations:
Free Okra
by Siddhartha Mitter
Sense of Place:
Sugarcane Harvesting (Southwest Louisana)
Photographs by Debbie Fleming Caffery
Horticulture:
Devil's Claw
by William Woys Weaver
The Future:
Hola, Arkansas!
by Edward Carpenter
In South Carolina:
Lowcountry Gold Rush
by John Martin Taylor
Cookbooks:
Haute Clementine
by Sara Roahen
Cookbooks:
The Black Presence
by Lolis Eric Elie
Writing on Writing:
Glossy South
by Anne Mendelson
Writing on Writing:
Edible Complex
by Jonathan Reynolds
Writing on Writing:
Faulkner's Taste for Wine
by Barbara Ensrud
Dealer’s Choice:
The Other Appetite
by Hal Crowther
The Moviegoer:
Just One More
Larry Brown, 1951–2004
by Gary Hawkins
The Moviegoer:
Putting a Bottom Under It
by Tom Rankin
Southern Scenes:
Marshall, North Carolina
Photograph by Debbie Fleming Caffery
Cooks in the Kitchen
Celebrity Chefs Reveal Their Southern Food Passions
Interviews by Emily Witt
The Great Eaters of Georgia
A Previously Unpublished Essay
by Carson McCullers
Good Times
by Lewis Nordan
Through the Past, (Sort of ) Darkly
by Paul Reyes
Some Like It Extra Hot
Adventures in masochistic dining at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack
by David Ramsey
Everybody Loves the Colonel
How fried chicken saved my family
by Silas House
Ice, by Padgett Powell
Arkansas Eats, by Molly Giles
Chicken & Dumplings, by Donald Harington
Figs, by Eugene Walter
Manna, by Andrew Hudgins
Cotton Candy, by Steve Almond
Lowcountry Boil, by James Alan McPherson
Raccoon, by Yusef Komunyakaa
New Orleans Hamburgers, by Brett Anderson
Boiled Peanuts, by Michael Griffith
Your Dekalb Farmers Market, by Joshua Foer
Hangover Cures, by George Singleton
Buttermilk, by John Fleer
Chicken-Fried Steak, by Dennis Covington
Feeding Strays, by George Kirius
Raw Meats, by Dr. Sammy Ray
As told to Robb Walsh
Praise Wine, by John Simpkins
Unfilled Desire, by Andrew Hudgins
Otis, His Forbidden 'Cue: Helotes, Texas, by Jake Adam York
Falling for My Husband, by Blair Hobbs
Asparagus, by Marck L. Beggs
Cover: "Stop and Eat" by Allison V. Smith.