The Believer, Issue 114

The Believer #114

by Vendela Vida (Editor), Heidi Julavits (Editor), Karolina Waclawiak (Editor)

The Believer , a five-time National Magazine Award finalist, is a bimonthly literature, arts, and culture magazine. In each issue, readers will find journalism and essays that are frequently very long, book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and interviews that are intimate, frank, and also very long. There are intricate illustrations by Tony Millionaire and a rotating cast of guest artists, poems, and regular columns by Nick Hornby and Daniel Handler.

The annual Music Issue features Karen Tongson on her namesake, Karen Carpenter, and how the particular whiteness of the Carpenters’ sound took off in the Philippines; Michael Snyder on a territory in northeast India in which contemporary Christian gospel is effecting near-total cultural assimilation; Phillip Pantuso on Guyanese songbird smugglers; Stephanie Elizondo Griest on dancers who place art above everything else in their lives; and Sandi Rankaduwa on the evolution of female emcees. There will also be (among other things) a special section on unreliable songwriters; a visual examination of Italo Disco’s map to humanity’s apotheosis via glitter and robot sex; and interviews with Enya, the LA Phil’s Deborah Borda, punk bassist Mike Watt, rapper and producer Lil B, and legendary rock muse Bebe Buell.

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 2015

About the author

Vendela Vida is the award-winning author of four books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers, and a founding editor of The Believer magazine. She is also the co-editor of Always Apprentices, a collection of interviews with writers, and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. As a fellow at the Sundance Labs, she developed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name into a script, which received the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award. Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the year, and she is the winner of the Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two children, and since 2002 has served on the board of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring lab for youth.

Reviews

[Hans · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Believer is dead, long live The Believer!

This is the long-gestating issue of The Believer in which the McSweeney's editorial team hands off the magazine to the new caretakers at The Black Mountain Institute. A lot of material was developed for the issue in the months between issues, so a few of the articles are a little overwhelmed by the sidebar poems and errata. That said, inside you will find the beautiful madness that is the calling card of the magazine. Probably the most important piece is the tribute to Alvin Buenaventura, who edited the Comics page for The Believer.