
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 16, 1995                   TAG: 9501190025
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A LOOK INSIDE THE OXFORD AMERICAN

"A rich mixture of fiction, interviews, commentary, essays, reviews and poetry." So did The Times-Picayune of New Orleans describe the inaugural issue of the Oxford American on March 29, 1992.

And it was nothing if not diverse. That first issue included an interview with retired New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael, stories by Oxford writers Barry Hannah and Jane Mullen, some poetry of arguable taste and a piece entitled "The New Optimism," by William F. Buckley Jr. The last begins with an account of Buckley's founding of his own magazine, The National Review, some 30 years ago.

With February's issue, the Oxford American has considerably sharpened its focus. All stories in the future will be about the South, said editor Marc Smirnoff.

The magazine, with best-selling writer John Grisham backing it, also features higher quality paper, better graphics and inside color now, and has a full-time staff of five.

"The Oxford American is reborn," wrote Smirnoff in a letter from the editor in that issue.

Grisham, in his publisher's note, said they are "determined to become the South's first major general-interest magazine" - and guaranteed there will be no stories about O.J. Simpson.

So what is in the new, improved Oxford American?

The magazine's 130 pages include fiction and features, photographs and essays - including one by executive editor Scott Morris on growing up in a Florida trailer with his sister, Julianne, who now appears in the television soap opera "The Young and the Restless."

There is a humorous column by Clyde Edgerton, short New Yorker magazine "Talk of the Town"-style pieces on Elvis Presley's blacksmith, hamburgers and emu steaks, voluptuous color drawings, reviews of books and music, and even a list of Southern best-sellers (at the top of the fiction list: "Dixie City Jam," by James Lee Burke.)

Grisham, who already has contributed an essay and been interviewed by the magazine, will continue to be present as a writer as well as publisher. The magazine will soon publish Grisham's first short story, Smirnoff said.

And June's issue, Smirnoff promised, will include a previously unpublished short story by William Faulkner.

by CNB