There are two complete sets of VQR. One is in the hands of the U.Va. library. The other is in the office of our editor, Ted Genoways, across the street from the library. I’ve witnessed the publication’s transformation over the past fifteen years, having read VQR as a teenager hanging out on U.Va. grounds, but that’s just a sliver of the 81-year-old’s history. I’ve come to enjoy flipping through old issues.

I recently came across the very first issue, Vol. 1, Issue 1, dated April 1925. At right is that first issue, with the table of contents listing not one but two award-winning authors: Senator William Cabell Bruce (Pulitzer) and Luigi Pirandello (Nobel Prize in Literature), the former having already won at the time of publication, the latter being recognized nine years later. The cover price was 75¢, a subscription $3.00. (Or $8.33/issue and $33/year in 2005 dollars.) It was a fine inaugural issue, and remains pleasantly relevant today.

Comic book artists and VQR contributors Chris Ware and Marjane Satrapi were featured on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” today. The two were interviewed by Jim Fleming for the Wisconsin Book Festival last month, and it’s that on-stage discussion that WPR included. The hour-long, unedited audio of the discussion is provided (19.8 MB MP3), and it’s well worth listening to.

Ware provided the cover art for our recent “Writers on Writers” special issue, and Satrapi serialized portions of her latest work, “Chicken with Plums,” in our Spring and Summer issues — we have an excerpt from part one available online.