_Since its founding nearly three decades ago, the Oxford American has served as an entryway to Southern storytelling, exploring the region’s literary contributions while publishing new works from the likes of Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Yusef Komunyakaa, and more.

Our latest Southern Lit Issue is no exception, featuring innovative stories by PEN/Faulkner Award winner Deesha Philyaw, OA veteran Mary Miller, and Herbert Girtley Jr., who debuts his first ever magazine piece with us. This fall, we asked a few of these contributors to share some of their favorite works by Southern writers. We hope these recommendations see you through the change in seasons.

Order your copy of the fall issue here for more great works of Southern Lit!

Deesha Philyaw, “Dr. Sandman” 

I remember standing in a huge, windy line at a movie theatre in 1985, part of a sea of excited Southern Black women including my mom and her girlfriends, waiting to see the The Color Purple. I was fourteen. Later, when I found out that this movie about Black girls and women in rural Georgia had been based on a book by Alice Walker, I devoured that book. Celie, Nettie, Sofia, and Shug Avery endure a lot of suffering in the four decades their stories span, but it is their joy, humor, resistance, and deep love for each other that endear me to this classic. 

Photo: Penguin Books

Dawnie Walton, “The High Shelf” 

A recent favorite is De’Shawn Charles Winslow's In West Mills, a slim but powerfully charming novel in the tradition of Zora Neale Hurston. Taking in its big heart, the familiar cadences of its dialogue, and its unforgettably messy heroine Knot, I smiled through nearly every page.

Photo: Bloomsbury Publishing

Mary Miller, “Outage” 

Donna Tartt’s The Secret History was one of the longest books I’d ever read way back in the early ’90s—a project book, a commitment. I loved it then and I love it now, and I reread it every few years. Bunny and Francis, Henry and the twins are as alive as anyone I’ve ever known. Despite everything, these are the friends I wished I’d had in college, the tight-knit group I always wanted to be a part of.

Photo: Vintage

S. J. Kim, “한년 (WOAMN,WHITE)” 

In writing my essay-creature for this issue, I revisited my doctoral work on Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular (1993), hands down my favorite work of Southern literature, and also rediscovered my love for a more recent text by another Louisiana native, Rickey Laurentiis’s Boy with Thorn (2015). I feel Laurentiis is extending Komunyakaa’s tradition, writing with the power to hold us close in some restless, ancient place. In “Conditions for a Southern Gothic,” Laurentiis writes, “As if my torn-off head in that bed swamped and whelming / then with water had one wish, and it did: to think stranger stuff, / to break that boring need to always have a shadow trail its maker”. Often, the words show us how we hurt and, too, how we might heal.

Photo: University of Pittsburgh Press

Herbert Girtley Jr., “Rum and Pearls”

One of my favorite works of Southern lit would be “Ark of Bones” by Henry Dumas. It’s a Southern gothic short story told from the perspective of Fish-hound, a young black boy who goes fishing on the Mississippi River and gets followed by his friend Headeye, who carries a mojo bone that allows him to have supernatural powers. The story takes a magical realist turn when they see an enormous boat floating atop the water, moving and standing still at the same time.

Photo: Amazon

Special thanks to our contributors for curating this list. We hope you enjoy!