Tag: Oxford American

How a writer worked hard to understand one of American music’s most mysterious performers while protecting his past, and art.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Sarah Weinman, Stephen Rodrick, Bianca Giaever, James Ross Gardner, and Megan Pugh.

Inside music journalism post-2008 recession, and how media consumption in the 21st century offers a road map for the continuation of the once-robust medium.

Link Wray is best known for his rock instrumentals, but in the early 1970s, he and his brothers recorded three albums in a chicken shack that sound like nothing else in his massive oeuvre.

Journalist John O’Connor talks about writing his epic Oxford American magazine feature on musician Link Wray.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Sheera Frenkel, Nicholas Confessore, Cecilia Kang, Matthew Rosenberg, and Jack Nicas; Phil Klay, Harley Rustad, Michael Graff, and Alan Siegel.

At Oxford American, Michael Graff remembers his dad, Carl.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Peter DeMarco, Tiffany Kary and Christopher Cannon, Rebecca Solnit, Will Bostwick, and Rosecrans Baldwin.

With approximately 75 percent of golden age gospel music lost, the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project is trying to save what’s left.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Brittany Packnett, Rahima Nasa, Jordan Smith, Scott Korb, and Chris Heath.

My origin story—as a son, and later a father and a husband; as a citizen, a racist— has always begun in a crumpled car at the side of the highway. May 30, 1982.

Zandria F. Robinson narrates her coming of age Memphis while examining contemporary southernness.

A love letter to the musician with a clear country voice.

“The trills in his notes sputter and lift. He sounds like an animal in trouble. Like a lounge singer who’s lost his mind.”

This week, we’re sharing stories from David Dobbs, Rachel Aviv, Max Read, Holly George-Warren, and Bianca Bosker.

A movement in Jackson, Mississippi is working to remake the way the city governs, feeds, and runs itself in order to serve the black community.

Fifty years after he published Oranges, one writer traces McPhee’s story to Florida to assess the state of American citrus.

Visiting Mar-a-Lago with Ralph Wolfe Cowan, who has painted celebrities like Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, and Donald Trump.

This meticulously-reported piece explores the bungled investigation into a 1994 double murder in Oak Grove, Kentucky, a small town weighed down by the military-industrial complex.

Louisiana Rien Fertel explores the complex history of New Orleans’ flambeaux — the men who carry the torches that light the way for Mardi Gras parades — in Oxford American.

The story of Eh Kaw Htoo, a Karen refugee from Myanmar — a man who “extolled the redneck’s work ethic” and helped build a community of 150 Karens who sustain one another by living frugally and sharing the bounty of the land in the rural community of Comer, Georgia.

I couldn’t quite figure out why Japanese listeners had come to appreciate and savor the blues in the way that they seemed to—lavishly, devotedly. Blues is still an outlier genre in Japan, but it’s revered, topical, present. I’d spent my first couple of days in Tokyo hungrily trawling the city’s many excellent record stores, marveling […]

At Oxford American, Ronni Lundy maps her past with family recipes.

In the Oxford American, John O’Connor searches the Everglades for the facts within the folklore of sugar cane farmer and outlaw E.J. “Bloody” Watson.

Looking at Amanda Petrusich’s 2013 Oxford American magazine story about blues singer Bessie Smith.

The first time I admitted that yes, I was related to Francis Scott Key, it came as a shock, even to me, because, of course, I was lying. While my other college friends experimented with drugs and God, I experimented with genealogy. Soon, I found myself trying to learn to pretend to be a writer […]

The top 5 longreads of the week, featuring, The Stranger, Oxford American, Next City, Politico, and Vice.

Life inside the cloister is fascinating. Poverty, silence, chastity, obedience: these are not characteristics most of us would devote our lives to. These women find freedom in strictures and structure. What is it like inside the convent walls? Here are five pieces explore the lives of nuns and those inspired by their works.

Below, our favorite stories of the week.