For the second time in three years, the Oxford American is a finalist for a National Magazine Award in General Excellence in the Literature, Science and Politics category, which “honors smaller-circulation general-interest magazines as well as publications covering media and the arts.” The Oxford American is a finalist alongside Aperture, Popular Science, VQR, and the Marshall Project. The Oxford American won the award in 2016.
Established in 1966, the National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media are sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and are administered by ASME. Considered ASME’s most prestigious honor, the award for General Excellence is judged based on “the achievement of editorial, visual and functional superiority in print, online and in person; the crossplatform integration of print, digital and experiential content; and the editors’ success in serving the interests of their readers.” The 2018 nomination recognizes the Oxford American’s work across the magazine’s Spring, Summer, and Fall 2017 issues, as well as brand extensions such as the magazine’s weekly web series (The By and By); annual music issue compilation; and concert series in Little Rock.
Highlights from the nominated issues include: the magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary spring edition, featuring cover artwork and a portfolio by photographer Jack Spencer; the annual “Southern Journeys” section in the summer issue, which included travel writing by Jamie Quatro, John O’Connor, Anne Gisleson, and others; fiction by Michael Parker, Gothataone Moeng, and Kevin A. González; poetry by Kaveh Akbar, Bob Hicok, Traci Brimhall, Morri Creech, and the late Margaret Walker; reported features by emerging journalists Nick Tabor and Katie Gilbert, produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project; and three excerpts from Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, which went on to win the 2017 National Book Award in Fiction.
“We are thrilled to be a finalist for General Excellence, and humbled to receive recognition alongside these four other outstanding publications,” said Eliza Borné, the Oxford American’s editor. “We are especially delighted to be nominated for our work in 2017, a year in which we celebrated the magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary.”
This is the OA’s fifteenth National Magazine Award nomination, its fourth year in a row to be nominated, and the third time in the magazine’s history to be nominated in General Excellence. The OA has won four Ellies: for Single Topic Issue in 1999 and 2003; Video in 2011; and General Excellence in 2016.
The 2018 winners will be announced during a lunchtime presentation hosted by CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday, March 13, in New York.
