Oxford American Magazine feature

“Young Woman with a Cupid” is featured in Oxford American Magazine’s The Southern Literature Issue 2009, No. 66, paired with “Rick Bragg Laments His Absent Muse.” See it online here. Hits newsstands this week. I’m so grateful to be included among other wonderful artists and great writers.

Here, where the history of writing is so deep and rich that magic, surely, must be involved, the craft comes with a dance card of legend, myth, and pretension. Could mortal men and women tell stories so well? Or, through an open window did inspiration come? – Rick Bragg

So happy to see my favorite novel, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, made it as #7 on their literature poll, Best Southern Novels of All Time. It’s been years since reading it, but I remember how much it made me laugh and cry. I’m going to have to get a copy and read again.

I once heard a poet say she never reads novels. When asked why, she said, “Because I always get about twenty pages in and then realize, hmm, THIS isn’t As I Lay Dying.” In comparison, everything else is a bit of a disappointment. – Keith Lee Morris