VQR
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The Woman in My Head: A Conversation with Emily Maloney
There’s a lot of rules or feelings about how writing a book should be, but very little of that actually corresponds with reality.
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This Week in Short Fiction
This week, a new Maggie Shipstead story at Virginia Quarterly Review explores love, infidelity, and the ways life can slip from under your feet like an avalanche. Bonus: there is also a literal avalanche. The story, “Backcountry,” follows a twenty-five-year-old…
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The Rumpus Interview with Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay discusses her new collection, Difficult Women, the problem with whiteness as the default and the need for diverse representation, and life as a workaholic.
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Ice Cream and Shrugging
Yesterday at the bus stop a fellow creature the gym ladies call “that particular element” asked for a hand—out, job, shake, off. That’s the door being female in public is walking through. It’s a drag, but mostly it’s ice cream…
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This Week in Short Fiction
It’s July, and the summer issues of literary magazines are rolling off both the physical and cyber presses, including Virginia Quarterly Review, which this week shared a story from its summer print issue online. In “Dixon” by Bret Anthony Johnston,…
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Pageantry and Water Sports
I had come in search of the meaning of synchronized swimming in modern America. Over the course of a week, I had gotten bored with the human body’s physical excellence. Maybe that was because, despite the spectacle at this level,…
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This Week in Short Fiction
You know it’s fall because of the crisp air, the changing leaves, the decorative gourds, and, most importantly, because the fall issues of literary magazines are launching. This week was Virginia Quarterly Review’s turn. On Monday, its Fall 2015 issue…
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Percival Everett, Begrudgingly
Everything is about identity. What is not? Over at VQR, Matthew Dischinger interviews Percival Everett, who expresses his views on the necessity of region and place in literature, good old-fashioned American racism, and his hatred of USA Today.
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Slowly Becoming
Roxane Gay speaks out on ‘black ambition’ at VQR: I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe…
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Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
We mourn the death of poet Leslie Scalapino. Our condolences to her family and friends, and to all who were moved by her work. PEN American announced the release of Burmese poet Saw Wei, imprisoned for “inducing crime against public…