Filmmaker and writer Tayler Montague will guest-edit the fall 2023 edition of the Oxford American, the quarterly Southern literature and culture magazine based in Little Rock.
The issue will examine Southern film as contributors explore Southern cinema in interviews and essays covering the history of a complex medium.
Montague’s first film, “In Sudden Darkness” from 2020, played across the country at independent film festivals and won the best narrative short award at the New Orleans Film Festival. She called guest-editing the film issue a great opportunity homing in on “all my interests as not only a filmmaker, but also as a writer and curator.”
In a news release, Montague thanked editor Danielle A. Jackson “for thinking of me, and the whole team for working with me.”
Jackson has edited the magazine since 2021, but in March took leave to write a book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux of New York. The book, “Honey’s Grill: Sex, Freedom and Women of the Blues,” will examine how the blues music genre inspired a new era of sexuality and freedom for Black women. The theme is rooted in the stories of three generations of Jackson’s family and a Memphis juke joint that her grandmother owned.
Filling in for her in the fall issue, Montague interviews director, screenwriter and actress Kasi Lemons, whose work includes biographical pictures “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” from this year and 2019’s “Harriet,” the story of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
Montague made her directorial debut with “Eve’s Bayou,” the 1997 film starring Jurnee Smollet and Samuel L. Jackson.
The magazine will also feature new work from award-winning culture writer Jewel Wicker, a personal essay from contributor Logan Scherer, and an exploration of Debbie Allen’s long filmmaking career by Jessica Lynne. Other pieces include an experimental article by National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed and meditations of films old and new.
The issue is available for preorder at OxfordAmericanGoods.org and will be on newsstands on Sept. 5. The Oxford American was born in William Faulkner’s Mississippi hometown but has been produced in Arkansas for more than two decades. The nonprofit quarterly is published by The Oxford American Literary Project Inc. in alliance with the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
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