Oracle with images from inside magazine.

Oracle Fine Arts Review

Published annually since 2003, Oracle Fine Arts Review accepts submissions each fall semester in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and hybrid work. To get an idea of the kind of work that interests us, please view a previous issue in our archive. Print copies are available in the English department office at no charge to USA students, faculty, and staff. All submissions should be previously unpublished. Questions can be sent to oracle@southalabama.edu.

Oracle is supported by the University of South Alabama Student Government Association, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Departments of English and Visual Arts. We are a student-led publication that aims to include and amplify a diverse chorus of voices.

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Editor's Letter

Dear Reader,

The world around us has changed fundamentally, irrevocably, and in surprisingly meaningful ways. What was once known as familiar and ordinary has become something entirely new, with those strands of intimacy and knowing streaking along in an unidentifiable, lost manner. We see the same sights, joys, and horrors of the world, trying to prescribe any semblance of identification and meaning to them. However, is it achievable to make sense of the senselessness?

Literary works and art help us in finding meaning and creating change in our ever-evolving world. Oracle Fine Arts Review serves as a mainstay of support in providing a wonderful outlet for writers and artists to provide works that produce thought, insight, and imagination. For years, Oracle has sought to generate depth and hope through its publications. We are celebrating a milestone this year, as the incredible editorial masthead and I are undertaking the 25th edition of Oracle, with the theme of UNCANNY serving as a propellent to all creatives.

We are seeking words and images that symbolize the familiar made unfamiliar, and how this process speaks to those who have felt this phenomenon. Explore what has transformed into something strange, different, and yet oddly familiar. It is my most sincere hope and aspiration that the uncanny nature of life that is captured within the 25th edition will identify with and inspire those who have felt lost and unsure in this new world.

The monumental Oracle XXV will be released in the Spring of 2027. Remember, the unsettling nature of life is still our own to take control of and make into something dazzling.

Continue reaching for the stars,

Avary (AJ) Miller, Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Masthead

Avary (AJ) Miller, editor-in-chief

Hannah Rhodes, managing editor

Jess Jordan, nonfiction editor

Anna Cox, fiction editor

Nathan Martin, poetry editor

Lucas Jorgensen, faculty advisor

Allie Parker, visual art director

Jayden Schroder, fiction reader & social media manager

Katie Eddins, art reader & copy editor

Katie Hubbell, nonfiction reader

Alexander Mattox, nonfiction reader

Sara Hagar, nonfiction reader

Maggie Cargill, nonfiction reader

Aislyn McComb, fiction reader

Amber Morris, fiction reader

Heather Holsenback, art & fiction reader

Ans Stork, poetry reader

Wesley Grant, poetry reader

Elizabeth Williams, poetry reader

Hollie Holbrook, poetry reader

Hannah Stone, poetry reader

Current Issue

Spring 2026

Oracle 2026 Magazine Cover

Short Stories

Graveside by David Bradley

They were a harsh-looking people, gathered around the grave, and not many of them, either. It was a hot summer afternoon, but they all looked as if they’d been scourged by too many winter winds. They stood silent as a minister said words over my uncle, final words for a man he clearly knew better than I did. He’d been a favorite of mine when I was a kid, the one romantic wanderer in my life before I had any idea what that was or how I’d be attracted to them. He was the oldest of my mother’s four brothers, old enough that he’d signed up as soon as he got the news about Pearl Harbor; smart enough that he’d been sent straight to Officer Candidate School; cursed enough that he’d led a squad of tanks face to face with Rommel somewhere in North Africa. He buried the memory of that fiery defeat somewhere deep inside, refusing to disinter it until he was confined to his deathbed for a second time. I remember my mother coming home from one of her final visits when he was dying, crying to me, “After everything he did in his life, why is that what he has to go back to now?”

A Father's Son

The mourners were not plentiful the day of the funeral. Vasudev had not been a popular man in this life, having dedicated very little time to cultivating and maintaining relationships.