Oxford American Editor Taking Book Leave to Write for Farrar, Straus

Danielle A. Jackson

Oxford American, the Southern culture and literary magazine born in Mississippi but an Arkansas fixture for more than two decades, will have an interim editor while Danielle A. Jackson takes leave to write a book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux of New York.

Jackson, the quarterly’s editor since 2021, is writing “Honey’s Grill: Sex, Freedom and Women of the Blues” after accepting what the magazine called a major book deal.

The book examines how the blues genre inspired a new era of sexuality and freedom for Black women, the magazine said in a news release. It is rooted in the stories of three generations of Jackson’s family and the Memphis juke joint Jackson’s grandmother owned.

“The stories we have been able to tell at the OA have been layered, complicated, full of music, adventure and love,” Jackson said. “I aspire to the same rigorous beauty in telling my own.”

The Memphis native was hired in 2020 as managing editor of Oxford American, founded in William Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, three decades ago. She rose to the editorship when Eliza Borné joined the Central Arkansas Library System in 2021.

Jackson is a former associate editor at Longreads, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Lapham’s Quarterly, Vulture and Bookforum, as well as the Criterion Collections. She is the first Black editor in chief in the magazine’s 30-year history.

Allie Mariano, assistant editor since June 2022, will serve as managing editor in Jackson’s absence. She is a former assistant professor of English whose work has appeared in the Times Picayune of New Orleans, december magazine, Another Chicago Magazine and others.

Also a Memphis native, Mariano lived in south Louisiana for a decade and now resides in Little Rock. “Joining the editorial team last year was a thrilling personal achievement, and working with Danielle has been a master class in developing my own editorial muscles,” Mariano said in the release. “I’m honored to continue her vision and to contribute to our central mission of publishing the complex and vital voices of the South.”

Anna Venarchik will join the magazine’s team as assistant editor during Jackson’s time away. Originally from Alabama, she holds a Master of Fine Arts in literary reportage from New York University and has had extensive experience at publications such as Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times and the Daily Beast.

The spring issue of Oxford American is scheduled to hit newsstands on March 28.