• Framing the War: Photo-essays from Iraq by Carolyn Cole, Ashley Gilbertson, and Chris Hondros
• Matt Power on the life and death of journalist Brad Will in Oaxaca
• The poetry of Jirí Orten, introduced by Edward Hirsch
• Fiction by Mario Vargas Llosa, Beena Kamlani, John McNally, and Brendan Mathews
• Poetry by Marianne Boruch, Alberto Ríos, and Charles Wright
• Criticism: Adam Kirsch on Yeats, Pound, and Auden; William Logan on Thomas Pynchon; and Michael Collier on Louis Bogan

• Drawing the Line: Writings on the Border by Philip Caputo, Mark Ehrman, Reynaldo Leal, Charles Rappleye, and Oscar Villalon.
• A Symposium on Mark Twain, featuring an unpublished work introduced by Ed Folsom and Jerome Loving, and David Caplan on Twain's patriotism.
• Fiction by Nadine Gordimer, Helon Habila, and R. T. Smith.
• Essays by Erik Campbell, Pauline W. Chen, Morgan Meis, David J. Morris, and Nicholas Schmidle.
• Poetry by Robert Olen Butler, Robin Ekiss, Alessandra Lynch, Gregory Orr, Alberto Ríos, Tom Sleigh, and Luis Alberto Urrea.

A special portfolio on Oil in Africa:
• John Ghazvinian on the black market for stolen oil in Nigeria
• Chris Hondros photographs the Oshie gas flare
• Nicholas Shaxson on Equatorial Guinea's President Obiang
• J. Malcolm Garcia on the humanitarian crisis in Chad
• New work by Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns, Pauline Chen, Walter Mosley, and J. Hoberman
• Fiction by Daniel Alarcón and Peter Nadas
• Poetry by Debra Bruce, Miriam Levine, Glyn Maxwell, Paisley Rekdal, Alan Shapiro, and C. Dale Young.

• An exclusive excerpt from Michael Chabon’s forthcoming novel The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.
• A new installment of Art Spiegelman’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!”
• Tony Kushner’s play “But the Giraffe!”
• “War Thoughts at Home,” an unpublished poem by Robert Frost with commentary by Glyn Maxwell and Robert Stilling.
• A dispatch from East Timor by Norman Ng.
• E. L. Doctorow on Edgar Allan Poe, David Kirby on Rabelais and Montaigne, Rick Barot on Rilke, and Dave Lucas on Mark Strand.
• Fiction by Dean Bakopoulos and Dan Chaon.

• James Ellroy on the film version of his novel The Black Dahlia.
• A story from Alice Munro’s new collection coming out this fall.
• Appreciations of Alice Munro by Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Michael Cunningham, and others.
• Charles Simic, David Rieff, and Dimiter Kenarov on the Balkans in the wake of Slobodan Miloševic.
• Larry Sabato proposes a new way to elect our President.
• The Case Against Robert D. Kaplan by Tom Bissell.
• New poetry by Garrett Hongo, Glyn Maxwell, and recent Pulitzer Prize–winner Claudia Emerson.
• Part 2 of Marjane Satrapi’s “Chicken with Plums.”

• “Why Darwin is Still Right (and Intelligent Design is Wrong)”: A special portfolio on Darwin, evolution, and intelligent design with essays by Niles Eldredge, Michael Ruse, Thomas Eisner, and Robert M. Sapolsky, and an excerpt from David Quammen’s forthcoming book The Reluctant Mr. Darwin.
• A symposium on Adrienne Rich, including new work by her, and appreciations by Marilyn Hacker, Mark Nowak, Hugh Seidman, Roberto Tejada, Jean Valentine, and Craig Werner.
• An excerpt from Marjane Satrapi’s forthcoming graphic novel Chicken with Plums.
• New fiction by Francine Prose, Kevin A. González, and Stephen Schottenfeld.

• Featuring a special portfolio on AIDS in Africa with reports by Helen Epstein, Philip Alcabes, and Jann Turner, and photo essays by Charter Weeks and Gideon Mendel.
• Another installment of Art Spiegelman’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!”
• Lawrence Weschler on the graphics of the Solidarity Movement.
• Helon Habila on African novelist Dambudzo Marechera.
• Fiction by Steve Almond, Deborah Eisenberg, John McNally, and Binyavanga Wainaina.
• Poetry by Billy Collins, Marilyn Hacker, and Charles Wright.

• Art Spiegelman’s first installment of his new work “Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!”
• Tony Kushner's short play “A Prayer for New York,” the Pulitzer Prize-winner’s response to 9/11.
• Lawrence Weschler profiles the artist Vincent Desiderio.
• A trio of dispatches from Southeast Asia: Lindsley Cameron on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tom Bissell and Morgan Meis on the 30th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, and Erik Campbell on living and writing in the jungles of Papua, Indonesia.
• Three tales of suspense by by Joyce Carol Oates, Alan Heathcock, and R.T. Smith.
• Essays by Pauline W. Chen, Stanly Plumly, and Steve Almond.

• An exclusive excerpt from Cormac McCarthy’s new novel
• Gabriel García Márquez reminisces about Rome and Paris in the ’50s
• A new, unpublished short story by Isabel Allende
• New poems by Charles Simic, Natasha Trethewey, Rodney Jones, and Carl Phillips
• Adam Clymer on what went wrong in the 2004 Election
• Tom Bissell travels north to the High Canadian Arctic
• Sven Birkerts on Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift
• Gary Gallagher on recent biographies of Ulysses S. Grant
• New fiction by Joanna Hershon, Brock Clarke, and Jennie Rathbun

Special Issue: Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass at 150
• Diane Ackerman on Whitman's birthplace
• Robert Creeley on Whitman in old age
• Mark Doty on Whitman's sexuality
• Galway Kinnell on Whitman's powers of imagination
• Additional essays by Meena Alexander, David Baker, David Haven Blake, Rafael Campo, Ed Folsom, Sam Hamill, Jane Hirshfield, William Logan, Natasha Trethewey, and Charles Wright
• Poems by Robert Bly and Gregory Orr