Virginia Quarterly Review

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/...

In the Silences Between Caution and Hope Portraits From a New Syria It’s easy to be cynical about Syria. Westerners have become largely inured to the bad news coming out of the country, where, under the brutal Baathist regimes of Bashar al.....

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/...

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week - Longreads Showcasing stories from Aaron Parsley, David Peisner, Leah Zani, Joseph Earl Thomas, and Matt Reynolds.

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:

Latest on Columbia with words by historian Ellen Schrecker www.vqronline.org/spring-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/...

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]

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/...

The Sedini Special, Lauren Markham, Reporting, with colorful sketch of small apartment buildings lining a narrow street

“Beneath the practicalities and the ethics, there was something else this town was lacking—that ineffable sense not of belonging but of its possibility.” Read Lauren Markham’s reporting on the 1 Euro House project in Italy: www.vqronline.org/winter-2024/...

Collection of books spread out on a cream colored surface under my sun hat: THIS IS HAPPINESS, REAL TOADS IMAGINARY GARDENS, Latest issues of VQR and AQR, SCREAM QUEEN, THE BURNING HEART OF THE WORLD

I am back in NYC & came home to this book haul! It’s like I went to AWP! Thank you to past me for all the pre-orders! Can’t wait to read you @nancykric.bsky.social @cdeskilson.bsky.social @vqr.bsky.social @paisleyrekdal.bsky.social @acrebooks.bsky.social @redhenpress.bsky.social

Fascinating new paper out on a contentious strategy for relocating species threatened by climate change to maintain ecosystem functions. "We must conserve the game, not the players."

To read more about this ethical debate, I explored it in depth for @vqr.bsky.social and @gristnews.bsky.social.

Photo of a cake and fruit spread lit by candles, with deep reds, blues, and cream colors coming through

“Three years ago, my eyesight began to change. The precision of a royal blue pen, the decisive moment on the page, now just lines and shapes.” Read Cig Harvey’s introduction to her photo portfolio “Beauty is the Only Language Worth Speaking,” from our Winter issue: www.vqronline.org/winter-2024/...

Adam Ekberg, winner of the VQR Prize for Photography, with magazine spread against a pink background

Adam Ekberg, winner of the VQR Prize for Photography, with magazine spread against a pink background

“It Either Sinks or Floats,” Adam Ekberg’s portfolio in our Summer issue, receives the VQR Prize for Photography. www.vqronline.org/fiction-2024...