W. Ralph Eubanks

Biography

W. Ralph Eubanks is a former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the author of Ever Is a Long Time (Basic Books, 2003) and The House at the End of the Road (Harper, 2009). His next book, A Place Like Mississippi, is forthcoming (Workman, 2021). A 2007 Guggenheim fellow, he is currently a visiting professor of English and Southern studies and writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi.

See Work

PHOTOGRAPHY / Summer 2020

Literary Life in a Plague Year

Photography by María Luz Bravo ,  Essay by W. Ralph Eubanks
Politics and Prose, Connecticut Ave. NW. Photo by María Luz Bravo.

Triumph of the Wills

By W. Ralph Eubanks

Last weekend, a friend posted images of Oxford in 1962 and Charlottesville in 2017 side by side with the caption “The names have changed, but the racism remains the same.”

Photo by Matt Eich
EDITOR'S DESK / Winter 2015

All the World Is a Stage

By W. Ralph Eubanks

For those of us who came of age in the shadow of the Cold War, popular culture as much as actual events affected perceptions of the frayed relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. By the 1980s, judging from the music...

EDITOR'S DESK / Fall 2014

Portrait of the Artist

By W. Ralph Eubanks

Self-doubt can be a writer’s best friend or mortal enemy. It all depends on how one directs the inner uncertainty that is the constant companion of every wordsmith who puts pen to paper for a living.

EDITOR'S DESK / Summer 2014

Summer Reading

By W. Ralph Eubanks

Our cover story takes us to Cambodia, which lies nestled between its more geopolitically powerful neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand. What the country lacks in regional influence it makes up for in the vitality of its waterways, particularly...

EDITOR'S DESK / Spring 2014

History’s Echo

By W. Ralph Eubanks

If spacious skies rising above amber waves of grain capture the romantic vision of an agrarian ideal, cotton fields serve as a reminder of the grittier, exploitative side of American agriculture. The sight of vast fields smattered with...

EDITOR'S DESK / Winter 2014

Art and Reading as Experience

By W. Ralph Eubanks

 

Engaging with art isn’t always a purely visual experience—it can sometimes involve getting your hands dirty. 

EDITOR'S DESK / Fall 2013

Casting a Light on Iconoclasts and Ideas

By W. Ralph Eubanks

Being called an iconoclast today is more a badge of honor than it was half a century ago when Merwin chose to break with poetic tradition. For our fall issue, VQR features men and women, past and present, who jolted society with the shock...

CRITICISM

Blurring the Worlds of Fiction and Reality

By W. Ralph Eubanks

The experience of reading literary diaries and letters can feel like an act of voyeurism. For the reader, the first few pages of revelations are guiltily tantalizing, as the inner life of a literary figure comes into focus and trips are...

EDITOR'S DESK

Across the Transom

By W. Ralph Eubanks

Since my appointment as editor of VQR, I’ve frequently been asked about the direction I plan to take the magazine. The question comes from both writers and readers, with writers wondering if VQR will be a welcoming home for their work and...