Our new issue is online, with portfolios by Lynn Johnson and Mandy Barker; essays by Sofi Thanhauser and Donovan Hohn; fiction by Bill Cheng, William Pei Shih, and Mimi Lok; poetry by Erin L. McCoy, Leslie Harrison, Sacha Marvin, and Nikki Giovanni. Read it all: www.vqronline.org/summer-2025
VQR Editor at Large Leslie Jamison and her daughter go to the depths of Disneyland in “Dark Ride to the Source,” a new essay in our centennial issue: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
I love when I read a piece of poetry that resonatesso deeply and on such a personal level. Thank you Amanda Gunn, not only was this beautiful but so very real and raw. Diagnostic I www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
In “Seeing Political,” @LouiePalu.bsky.social’s political photography goes in search of the imperfect picture, deconstructing the photo op to perfect it. Read the rest of his #VQRTrueStory in partnership with the Pulitzer Center from our centennial issue: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
Cyantown investigates a murder in the latest Open Letter, by Gambineri, from our centennial issue. Find out who did it: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
Black and white photo of person wearing a keffiyeh ripping up a Columbia diploma
Nina Berman’s photographs of Columbia University are “haunting images of a locked-down campus… autocracy revealed in the form of a restive yet silence space under control,” Ellen Schrecker writes in her introduction to the portfolio, new in our centennial issue: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
this essay about a Pokémon tournament was so good it made me boot up my emulator for the first time in many a year www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
A Language for Reinvention, Javier Fuentes, On Becoming
“The second time I escaped a language was conscious and planned. In the summer of 1997, right after college, I left the suburbs of Madrid for New York City to learn English and the language of my body,” Javier Fuentes writes in our latest On Becoming column: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
Awe & Splendor, Tom Bissell, Profile. Art by Joe Gough
Most screenwriters, even very good screenwriters, go to their graves without having imprinted a single line of dialogue onto the American cultural consciousness. Goldman did so multiple times. One of his most lasting and influential aperçus wasn't found in any script. It came, instead, from his book Adventures in the Screen Trade: Nobody knows anything.
Tom Bissell met William Goldman as a young writer in New York City, at first with the intent of profiling him. But their relationship became something more important than a single article, Bissell recalls in “Awe and Splendor,” a profile from our centennial issue: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
This is one of those Rare Things: a piece about a game that's beautifully written and meaningful (+ readable) to those beyond its fandom.
Much applause to novelist/professor Joseph Earl Thomas, and to @longreads.com for pointing in its direction.
www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
Grantee George Butler travels back to Syria, after 12 years, to portray a nation rebuilding itself.
These interviews for @vqr.bsky.social showcase how civil society—the bedrock of the Syrian humanitarian response—is flourishing across the country. bit.ly/4nUvbvF
4. "The Game Is Played With Great Feeling" (Joseph Earl Thomas)
"But this is no mere subculture story or travelogue. It’s a journey under the skin, an investigation of why the game has become such a specific kind of phenomenon."
www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
In our Weekly Top 5:
* A first-person flood account @texasmonthly.bsky.social
* Californians icing ICE @rollingstone.com
* Sexually diverse vegetables @noemamag.com
* Pokémon: Go! @vqr.bsky.social
* Polo clonies @wired.com
longreads.com/2025/07/18/t...
A student comes to IIT-Delhi’s administrative offices to change his name—and his entire identity. Read “A Friendship,” fiction by Karan Mahajan in our centennial issue. www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
“The Cloud of Unknowing, 2019,” new poetry by Victoria Chang in our centennial issue: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
"As my best friend once reminded me: A parent is not a carpenter; she is a gardener. We don’t construct our children. We tend to them." —Leslie Jamison for @vqr.bsky.social
www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
Touring the Vault, essay by Allison Wright & Julia Mathas
Executive editor Allison Wright and editorial assistant Julia Mathas peek behind the curtain of VQR’s formative years in this snapshot from the magazine’s archives, the first in a series that will unfold throughout the year. Tour the vault with them: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Image by Louie Palu. United States, 2024.
Grantee @louiepalu.bsky.social is taking an alternative approach to political photography.
"What might be gained by revealing the architecture behind these constructed moments of political life?”
Learn more in this “visual column” for the @vqr.bsky.social.
👉 bit.ly/44w7TVt
In the Silences Between Caution and Hope, portfolio by George Butler, with a hand-drawn portrait of a man surrounded by objects
Text reads, "Abu Sham, caretaker, gravedigger, Homs. We are affected by all these dead because they are our sons, our people. And they were fighting for us, fighting the regime."
Days after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, George Butler went to Syria. “In the Silences Between Caution and Hope” is a collection of portraits of a society reckoning with what it means to be free. In partnership with @pulitzercenter.bsky.social: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
ICYMI:
VQR Editor at Large Leslie Jamison and her daughter go to the depths of Disneyland in “Dark Ride to the Source,” a new essay in our centennial issue: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
What is going on at Columbia? Ellen Shrecker, esteemed historian of McCarthyism and higher ed, and Nina Berman, documentary photographer extraordinaire, answer clearly.
"But, as Nina Berman’s photographs of Columbia University show, what has been happening to the American academy these days is incommensurably worse." 2/2 www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
The number 100 in orange and blue, made of paper cut-out letters, decorated with figures representing VQR's past
Our centennial issue is online today, featuring essays from Joseph Earl Thomas, Leslie Jamison, and Tom Bissell; portfolios from Syria by George Butler & Columbia University by Nina Berman; fiction by Etgar Keret & Karan Mahajan, poetry by Victoria Chang, and more: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025
Read “Water-Light,” poetry from Jada Renée Allen in our Winter 2024 issue: www.vqronline.org/winter-2024/...
![[note that the line breaks don’t quite work on this platform as they do on the page, but I did my best with them]
SARA NOVIC
Lockdown at the School for the Deaf
Yesterday, my son taught me the sign for lockdown—
different than locking a door,
or the shutdown we invented at the start
of the pandemic. Little fistfuls of locks
swept quickly between us, a sign designed especially for school.
My son spent his first years a different kind of
locked up—an orphanage in Bangkok, where he didn't
speak and they couldn't sign. He came home, age four,
silent. We thought being here could open
doors. It has, of course. He's learned so much
at the deaf school; the speech therapist calls it a Language
Explosion. I keep lists of the words he's gathered:
vanilla, buckle, castle, stay. And
lockdown. He absorbs it like the rest. Now the schools
he builds with Magna-Tiles have lockdowns. I worry
in trying to give him keys, we've only changed the locks.
[There is another brilliant stanza to this poem that is not pictured]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:yzu5lus5ff7wumrqrmzsllnz/bafkreifij5xsrsefpepiq6zqwtdjvxdj7evy6vdbcz2ml3lvm2763wzymu)
[note that the line breaks don’t quite work on this platform as they do on the page, but I did my best with them] SARA NOVIC Lockdown at the School for the Deaf Yesterday, my son taught me the sign for lockdown— different than locking a door, or the shutdown we invented at the start of the pandemic. Little fistfuls of locks swept quickly between us, a sign designed especially for school. My son spent his first years a different kind of locked up—an orphanage in Bangkok, where he didn't speak and they couldn't sign. He came home, age four, silent. We thought being here could open doors. It has, of course. He's learned so much at the deaf school; the speech therapist calls it a Language Explosion. I keep lists of the words he's gathered: vanilla, buckle, castle, stay. And lockdown. He absorbs it like the rest. Now the schools he builds with Magna-Tiles have lockdowns. I worry in trying to give him keys, we've only changed the locks. [There is another brilliant stanza to this poem that is not pictured]
VQR Winter 2004 issue. Cover is a vibrant, colorful image—a mixture of flowers, pieces of cake and doughnuts with lots of sprinkles. Shades of orange, pink, and purple. The pastries are almost camouflaged in with the flowers. Stunning artwork by Cig Harvey
I think you all should order this issue of @vqr.bsky.social so you can read the stunning ending of this incredible poem by @novicsara.bsky.social
Art of man sleeping next to baby, in stroller, in a lobby. Text reads Stove City, James Wharton Jr., Fiction
“Lily was my dog. In Lily were combined the two most beautiful and highest virtues—I’ve thought about this, and I mean it—the two very highest virtues of all conscious life, which are 1) likes to play and 2) gentleness.”
Read James Whorton Jr.’s “Stove City”: www.vqronline.org/winter-2024/...