Editor's Desk

• Ted Genoways — On Meeting Writers

Dispatch

• Tom Bissell — A Polar Turn of Mind: Finding Peace and Quiet in the High Canadian Arctic

Essay

• Steve Almond — Heavy Metal Music Will Save Your Life
• SVEN BIRKERTS — Humboldt’s Gift
• ADAM CLYMER and Ross MacDonald — Election 2004: What Happened?
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez — Memories of 1955
• WILLIAM KLOEFKORN — Walking with the Dog to Dover
• Sanford Pinsker — The Tortoise and the Hare; Or, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and the Vagaries of Fiction Writing
• Martin Preib — The Wagon

Web Exclusive

• Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gene H. Bell-Villada — Journey Back to the Source: An Interview with Gabriel García Márquez

VQR Gallery

• THOMAS ALLEN — Good Light

Fiction

• ISABEL ALLENDE — The Guggenheim Lovers
• Brock Clarke — The Ghosts We Love
• Joanna Hershon — Crawl
• CORMAC MCCARTHY — Agua
• Jennie Rathbun — Kidney Season

Poetry

• ALIKI BARNSTONE — Children’s Literature
• ERIN BELIEU — Of the Poet’s Youth and The Last of the Gentlemen Heartbreakers
• Juanita Brunk — Prodigal
• Victoria Chang — Planting Tulips
• Jonathan Fink — Son’s Blessing
• Brendan Galvin — Sprezzatura and Canoeing with Master Williams
• SUSAN HAHN — The Scarlet Ibis
• John Hoppenthaler — Anticipate the Coming Reservoir
• Rodney Jones — Courtship and Vision of the End of the World in the Valdosta Holiday Inn
• Claire Malroux and Marilyn Hacker — The Shadow at Cabourg
• Corey Marks — Miguel Hernández, Madrid, 1934
• Charlotte Matthews — Stablehand’s Song
• CARL PHILLIPS — The Damned and Late Empire
• Charles Simic — Memories of the Future, A Life of Fragments, Ghost Ship, and House of Cards
• Natasha Trethewey — Pilgrimage and Scenes From a Documentary History of Mississippi
• Susan Williamson — Nocturne

Recent Books

• Gary Gallagher — The American Ulysses: Rehabilitating U. S. Grant
• ROBERT F. HAGGARD — Old Wine in New (Medicine) Bottles?

Book Reviews

• Jack R. Fischel — The New Anti-Semitism

Book Notes

• Book Notes
  

Humor

• Ross MacDonald — Dead-Eye Comic