PUBLISHED: March 26, 2019
In an effort to better acquaint you, the reader, with the VQR staff, members of our team will share excerpts from our personal reading—The Best 200 Words I Read All Week. From fact to fiction, from comedic to tragic, we hope you find as much to admire in these selections as we do.
Click here for access to the complete project archive
1.
The American Society of Magazine Editors doled out accolades from Brooklyn Steel in Williamsburg, where the news business’ heaviest hitters — including The New Yorker’s David Remnick, former editor in chief of New York Magazine Adam Moss and Wired’s Nicholas Thompson — assembled for the festivities.
Although many constituted journalism’s veterans, there were some newcomers, too — and they ended up taking home awards. Founder of Kazoo Magazine Erin Bried made ASME history when she won the General Excellence, Special Interest award; she is the sole staff editor of the children’s magazine. The crowd went absolutely nuts when her name was announced, and she ran up to the stage to receive her award.
Topic, the video and photo-driven publication, is riding on a high — after having been around for less than two years, making the Netflix hit “Losers,” and with a staff of just nine full-time employees, the site won two Ellies: for Video, News and Opinion and Video, Service and Lifestyle. The Virginia Quarterly Review won its first Ellie for General Excellence, Literature, Science and Politics; when the win was revealed, someone from the publication’s camp screamed, “Holy s–t!” and clamped her hand over her mouth in disbelief.
Art Director Jenn Boggs
Excerpt from “ASME’s Ellie Awards Honor the Old Guard — And Some Newcomers, Too” in WWD by Maxine Wally
2.
Later, after his death, one of his colleagues noted that my father “believed that beauty would save the world.” My father would never have said that about himself. Yet it was true, if you understood beauty to encompass not only ecstasy but precision, rigor, a relish for the tiniest (literally microscopic) details. And it was true about me, too. We were a religious sect consisting of two people, and now half the congregation was gone. There would be no closure, no healing. I would simply adjust myself to a new and severely depleted reality. The world would come to an end, as it always does, one world at a time.
Editor Paul Reyes
Excerpt from “Family Medicine” in the New Yorker by James Marcus
