An Interview with Pauline W. Chen

Pauline Chen, a transplant surgeon turned essayist, received her first national publication in the pages of VQR. Her essay “Dead Enough? The Paradox of Brain Death,” appeared in the Fall 2005 issue and was later named a finalist for a 2006 National Magazine Award. VQR also published Chen’s essay “Morbidity and Mortality: A Surgeon Under Exam” in its Winter 2007 issue. Both pieces are included in the just-published book Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality (Knopf, 2007). She spoke to writer Heather Lee Schroeder by telephone from her home in Boston where she lives with her husband and children.

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An Interview with Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer received the Booker Prize for her novel The Conservationist in 1974 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Rightly considered among the best and most important writers in the world, Gordimer began her publishing career in the United States in the pages of VQR with her story “The Catch,” featured in our Summer 1951 issue. The author of over two dozen novels and story collections, her most recent work is Get a Life (FSG, 2005). She spoke with writer Henk Rossouw in November 2004.

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An Interview with Gabriel García Márquez

This interview was conducted in 1977 for publication in El Manifiesto—a now-defunct Colombian leftist journal. Chatting with the magazine’s staff writers, García Márquez opens up remarkably and bares his most nostalgic and personal side.

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An Interview with Peter Ho Davies

Peter Ho Davies, the son of Welsh and Chinese parents, grew up in Britain before moving to the United States in 1992 to pursue his M.A. in creative writing from Boston University. His first published story in the U.S. was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 1995 and later became the title story for his first collection, The Ugliest House in the World (1998). This book received the Oregon Book Award, the MacMillan Silver PEN Award, and the prestigious John Llewellen Prize. His second collection, Equal Love (2000), was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

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An Interview with John McNally

John McNally is author of The Book of Ralph, published in March of 2004 by Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster. His previous collection, Troublemakers (Iowa, 2000), won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award (2000) and the Nebraska Book Award (2001), and was a Book Sense 76 selection. He's held Michener (U. of Iowa), Djerassi (U. of Wisconsin), and Jenny McKean Moore (George Washington University) fellowships, all for fiction writing. He's currently the recipient of a Chesterfield Writer's Film Project fellowship, sponsored by Paramount Pictures, for screenwriting.

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The Stories of Richard Bausch

Richard Bausch has published nine novels and six volumes of stories. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, and numerous literary journals and anthologies, including the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories. He was recently inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Bausch's novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature length motion picture starring Maureen Stapleton and Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lionel Stander and Olivia D'Abo. His most recent novel, Hello to the Cannibals, received the Library of Virginia Literary Award.

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Audio of Michael Chabon at the Virginia Festival of the Book
Before a capacity crowd of 500 people, the Virginia Festival of the Book featured a reading and conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Wonderboys. [The audio of Michael Chabon's reading has been temporarily disabled while we work on the audio portion of our website. Please check back again soon.]