Top 10 Magazine Covers of 2008 includes VQR!

Time magazine is announcing their Top 10 lists of 2008 and we here at VQR get to crow a bit and point you to the Top 10 Magazine Covers of the year, which includes the cover from our Fall 2008 issue, among work from the New Yorker, New York magazine, and Rolling Stone.

Kudos to Ashley Gilbertson, whose photo graces the cover, and Percolator Graphic Design, our great and unsung designers.

The top 10 covers were chosen by Arthur Hochstein, the art director at Time. His comments on VQR’s cover:

Often cited by professional organizations for its content, The Virginia Quarterly Review also has consistently inventive covers. One of its secrets is the simple, strong format, which never varies from issue to issue. This particular cover isolates, for maximum effect, the stark black-and-white photo of a woman sleeping, dreamily out of focus. In focus is a tattoo on her shoulder of her deceased brother, who committed suicide after his second tour of duty in Iraq. And this focal shift turns reality inside-out: The dead victim is vivid and alive in the dream of his sister, whose life may have lost focus because of her profound loss. Regardless of one’s position on the Iraq War, this is a searingly sad cover that provokes equal parts sympathy and outrage.