Current Issue

This issue of VQR features two portfolios that document regions in transition, poised between a vanishing past and an uncertain future. Lys Arango’s lush and gritty photographs of coal yards reclaimed by vegetation, controlled demolitions, and the transformation of shuttered mines into crowded theaters tell the story of Spain’s Asturian mining basin as it shifts away from coal toward a new and improvised economy. Meanwhile, Gabriela Bulišová and Mark Isaac journey to Lake Baikal in Siberia, where an otherworldliness remains strikingly apparent even as the lake itself has become endangered by pollution, rising temperatures, and dwindling legal protections.

Essays by Anna Badkhen and Michael Alan Parker manifest the simple practice of stopping to pay attention to the world around us, at two remarkably different scales. Reflecting on the 2024 solar eclipse, Badkhen considers the kinds of experiences that transform groups of strangers into cohesive bands directed toward a shared purpose: communal prayer, public protests, and yes, celestial events. Parker, meanwhile, demonstrates the elegance of single-panel cartoons by teaching us to find depths of meaning in the briefest splashes of color and the most laconic of captions. 

Jared Jackson, William Giraldi, and Katherine Webb contribute fiction. The issue also includes poetry by Jesse Nathan, Dmitry Blizniuk (translated by Sergey Gerasimov), Gregory Fraser, Kathleen Radigan, and Sydney Mayes. In a new installment of our On Becoming column, Naeem Murr considers the lessons of a lost friendship, while the #VQRTrueStory column sees Louie Palu continue his behind-the-scenes look at political theater on Capitol Hill.

Cover photo by Lys Arango.