Virginia Quarterly Review
@vqr.bsky.social
An award-winning national magazine at the University of Virginia. Established in 1925. vqronline.org Weekly email newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hiepvn Weekly poetry newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ilfAh1
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/...
A fascinating and funny history of writers and stomach distress! www.vqronline.org/winter-2024/...
From the Gut
By my late twenties, it had gotten so bad I could barely sleep. Many people toss and turn after, say, a baked brie or Blazin’ Buffalo Wings. But at twenty-eight, even less-quarrelsome foods—steak, car...
vqronline.org
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/...
Diagnostic I
Where you are goingyou cannot takeyour things leavein this locker the rivetsat the corners of your bluejeans
vqronline.org
thoughtful exploration of what all those 'one-euro houses!' actually mean in reality
The Sedini Special
If you could move anywhere, where would it be? This used to be a question I’d ask myself or others at dinner parties or in fits of fancy, but two years ago, as new parents facing both the unsustainabl...
vqronline.org
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/...
Cyantown
vqronline.org
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/...
The Game Is Played With Great Feeling
In the back of an Uber creeping down Decatur Street, my driver, Ursa, this short-haired Black woman a generation above me, is reminiscing about last week’s Frankie Beverly concert, slowing down to rep...
vqronline.org
“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/...
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/...
The Game Is Played With Great Feeling
In the back of an Uber creeping down Decatur Street, my driver, Ursa, this short-haired Black woman a generation above me, is reminiscing about last week’s Frankie Beverly concert, slowing down to rep...
vqronline.org
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
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.....
pulitzercenter.org
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 Game Is Played With Great Feeling
In the back of an Uber creeping down Decatur Street, my driver, Ursa, this short-haired Black woman a generation above me, is reminiscing about last week’s Frankie Beverly concert, slowing down to rep...
vqronline.org
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...
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week - Longreads
Showcasing stories from Aaron Parsley, David Peisner, Leah Zani, Joseph Earl Thomas, and Matt Reynolds.
longreads.com
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/...
A Friendship
The metallic desks in the administrative offices of IIT-Delhi, India’s top-ranked engineering college, hadn’t been moved since 1976; nor had their bureaucratic occupants. This created in the office an...
vqronline.org
“The Cloud of Unknowing, 2019,” new poetry by Victoria Chang in our centennial issue: www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
The Cloud of Unknowing, 2019
The tops of the buildings were shorn. So I walkeddown Market Street to see if I could find them. The fog tried to take my head off. I was so scared onsome parts of Market that I stayed a few feet behi...
vqronline.org
"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/...
Dark Ride to the Source
Over the course of thirty-six hours, my daughter and I rode with Mr. Toad into the depths of hell, squinted at a bonfire of sewing spindles, choked on hairspray, broke the fourth wall at least fifteen...
vqronline.org
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/...
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
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:
Virginia Quarterly Review@vqr.bsky.social · last yr.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
Latest on Columbia with words by historian Ellen Schrecker www.vqronline.org/spring-2025/...
In the Hallowed Place Where There’s Only Darkness
For more than fifty years, I have been studying and writing about political repression and higher education, with a special emphasis on McCarthyism, long considered by historians to be the most seriou...
vqronline.org
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/...
Dark Ride to the Source
Over the course of thirty-six hours, my daughter and I rode with Mr. Toad into the depths of hell, squinted at a bonfire of sewing spindles, choked on hairspray, broke the fourth wall at least fifteen...
vqronline.org
What is going on at Columbia? Ellen Shrecker, esteemed historian of McCarthyism and higher ed, and Nina Berman, documentary photographer extraordinaire, answer clearly.
In the Hallowed Place Where There’s Only Darkness
For more than fifty years, I have been studying and writing about political repression and higher education, with a special emphasis on McCarthyism, long considered by historians to be the most seriou...
vqronline.org
"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/...
In the Hallowed Place Where There’s Only Darkness
For more than fifty years, I have been studying and writing about political repression and higher education, with a special emphasis on McCarthyism, long considered by historians to be the most seriou...
vqronline.org
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/...
Water-Light
vqronline.org
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
![[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)
“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/...
