With compelling new short fiction, literary and musical criticism, and a curated collection of fine art, the spring issue breathes deeply and emerges hopeful.

February 28, 2023—CONWAY, AR—The Oxford American’s 120th issue explores homes, storms, and our yearning for solace in both. Featured on the cover is Austin-based Lisa Choinacky’s “Cup & Ring.” In her artistic practice, Choinacky creates every piece as “a meditation” and calls “every brush stroke, a breath.” 

In the Spring Issue, our contributors sit with the gothic essence of the American and global Souths in new and unexpected ways. With pieces on musicians and priests, houses and homes, the issue promises the full range of human experience: the everyday horrors that people face and the solace they can find in their loved ones. In new fiction, return contributor Jeffery Renard Allen crafts a moody stream-of-consciousness short story from the point of view of a certain Miles Davis, who happens to be alive and well and living forever. Emerging writer Isaac Hughes Green brings us “Fifteens,” an original short story about generational dreams and the love of basketball. Atlanta photographer Nicole Hernandez shines a light on mothers, lovers, and friends in a brand new Eyes on the South feature, curated by photographer EWANG.

The issue features an impressive range of contributors. Justin Nobel reports from Barbuda on the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic. Pulitzer Center senior editor Tom Hundley digs into the 1946 trouble in Tennessee, one of the first trials about police violence against Black men that made it onto the front pages of mainstream America’s newspapers. In our multifaceted Omnivore section, reporter Marcus J. Moore profiles the “dark and cavernous beats’’ of D.C. rapper billy woods, while return OA contributor Christopher C. King gives Cormac McCarthy the big literary treatment in a review of his most recent novels, contextualized by his oeuvre. 

Elsewhere, contributors Josh Peacock, Madeline Weinfield, and Brendan Egan take us into sanctuaries, historic homes, and edgelands. This issue features Treasure Shields Redmond’s original poem, “Who is Sam Blow?” commissioned by the OA for the April production of the No Tears Project in St. Louis, Missouri. Other poetry contributors include Tim Z. Hernandez, Jacob Shores-Argüello, Edgar Kunz, and John Gosslee.

The 2023 Spring Issue is available now for pre-order at OxfordAmericanGoods.org. It will be on select newsstands on March 28, 2023. 

Or, subscribe to the Oxford American by visiting OxfordAmerican.org/subscribe. For bulk orders, contact info@oxfordamerican.org or 501-374-0000.