Danielle A. Jackson
As the first Black editor in chief of a magazine named for William Faulkner’s corner of Mississippi, Danielle A. Jackson feels a small pit in her stomach.
Sure, she’s proud to edit the Oxford American, a four-time National Magazine Award winner focused on Southern culture, literature and the arts, one that’s been based in Little Rock since moving from Oxford, Mississippi, in late 2002.
“But yeah, I feel some discomfort sometimes,” Jackson said not long after being named the magazine’s permanent editor in chief last month; she had been interim editor since succeeding Eliza Borné in March. “There are very old pieces in the magazine’s archives that I think were unintentionally offensive, and they give me discomfort in the belly.
“But I am also immensely proud of the region, and I feel that I cope with less [racism] in this job than probably anywhere else,” Jackson said. After all, racism is as prevalent in upstate New York or Boston as it is in Mississippi or Arkansas, she said, and wherever she goes in publishing, she’s accustomed to being the only person of color in the room.
“As Southerners, there’s something shared,” said Jackson, a Memphis native with a bachelor’s degree from American University in Washington and a master’s candidate in narrative nonfiction at the University of Georgia. “There are a lot of offensive things to face, but people face them.”
The Oxford American, she says, is positioned well to reckon with the issue, and to elevate writers, artists and musicians who speak from an evolving and diverse Southern culture.
Strangely, Jackson felt competitive pangs when she saw the June cover of The Atlantic, which featured an illustration of a melting Confederate battle flag.
“Our writers have been wrestling with these ideas since 1992,” she said.
That was the year that Marc Smirnoff founded the magazine in Mississippi, launching the first edition with credit card debt, gifts from friends and relatives and donated offerings from top Southern writers. That inaugural issue featured literary heavy hitters like Roy Blount Jr., Charles Bukowski, Richard Ford, Pauline Kael and John Updike. Remarkably, every one of the 24 authors noted on the cover back then were white. By contrast, three of the five writers featured on the cover of September’s literary issue are black.
“Over the years, we’ve been working things out,” Jackson said. “And that’s what’s exciting and generative. We have an important voice to take the conversation forward in a time when Americans are more engaged with social justice.”
The magazine lived hand to mouth for years, ceasing publication twice.
Mississippi novelist John Grisham resuscitated it in 1995, and it was rescued again in Arkansas by former Bear State Financial Chairman Rick Massey, a director on the magazine’s board, in 2012. Massey, now CEO of Cannae Holdings Inc. of Las Vegas, agreed to pay off $700,000 the magazine owed to the University of Central Arkansas, its publishing partner. That same year, Smirnoff was dismissed in a sexual harassment scandal in which he said he was falsely accused. Earlier, in February 2009, an employee’s embezzlement had required a $100,000 gift from an anonymous donor to square accounts with the Internal Revenue Service.
The magazine now operates as a nonprofit 501(c)(3), reaping revenue from advertising, fundraising, grants, foundation and corporate donations, proceeds from newsstand sales and subscriptions. It publishes about 25,000 print copies quarterly, with a cover price of $14.95.
Jackson, who spent years in the New York arts and culture world, oversaw OA’s current fall 2021 offering, the Southern lit Issue, featuring writers like Deesha Philyaw, Dawnie Walton, Mary Miller and the poet Henry Dumas. Dumas, born in Sweet Home, Arkansas, in 1934, was gaining attention as a writer when he was killed by New York police in 1968.
Jackson headed the magazine’s famed music issue last year, and she has edited works by Bryan Washington, Harmony Holiday, Patterson Hood and others. A former editor at Longreads, her own writings have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Lapham’s Quarterly and elsewhere.
She has many plans for the magazine, including stories about the region with topics that lend themselves to audio. OA’s “Points South” podcast is led by Sara A. Lewis, a former OA executive editor who was named this year as the publication’s executive director.
“I just want us to remain beautiful and challenging, and engaging in print,” said Jackson, 40.
Another goal is to publish more visual art in the magazine. “We want to present as expansive a view of the region and, therefore, the nation, as we can. That, to me, is being truthful.”
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