Sampler: Oxford American — Southern Blues issue
Founded in 1992, Oxford American is a non-profit literary magazine dedicated to the finest in Southern writing. Recently commended for Best Original Non-Fiction at the Stack Awards, this multi-award-winning magazine has also picked up plaudits from the National Magazine Awards and The O. Henry Prize, and The New York Times called it, “Perhaps the liveliest literary magazine in America.”
Their 18th annual southern music issue, this time spotlighting the blues, is packed with intriguing writing spanning from homegrown singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt and RnB prima donna Lauryn Hill, to Malian musician Bassekou Kouyaté. Scroll through some of this issue’s fantastic offering below, then head over to Sampler to secure your copy.
In this issue:
— The power of blues women’s duets, from Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas to Lauryn Hill and Mary J. Blige, discussed by Daphne Brooks
— Amanda Petrusich encounters a real, thriving blues scene in a place far from its source in the American South: Tokyo, Japan— Zandria F. Robinson — the daughter of a Memphis-born mother and a Delta-raised father — reflects on the music her father loved
— Singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt’s journey of artistic formation, and the moment of transition when, on the cusp of turning 40, Raitt had a mainstream breakthrough with Nick of Time— A fictional meeting between Jimi Hendrix and artist Francis Bacon in London during Hendrix’s years there, as imagined by Jeffery Renard Allen
— And John Jeremiah Sullivan, Southern editor of the Paris Review, mines his hometown Louisville, Kentucky’s blues history
Until Sunday, this is the only place to get Oxford American for 10% off and free shipping (US, Europe, UK, and reduced everywhere else). But we only have a limited amount of copies, so order yours now!
