The Emily Clark Balch Prizes and the Staige D. Blackford Prize were created to honor the best writing to appear in the pages of VQR each year. Past recipients include John Berryman, Philip Caputo, Pauline W. Chen, Carolyn Forché, Natasha Treth [...]
By Shannon Sanders, Illustrations by Anna Schuleit Haber
September 11, 2023
Here was Cyrus at the door on a Saturday, unannounced and with a leather duffel hanging from each arm, asking to crash for a night or two—three at absolute most.
Viejo San Juan, Puerto RicoThe iguanas slither from the branches of trees splintered by the hurricanes. The iguanas crawl from the cracks in the ground split by the earthquakes. The iguanas rise from brown floodwaters that carry bridges to the [...]
For LaurenThe other teachers warned you: She will curse you out. She said: I thought you would be just another white bitch, but you’re not. You heard Isabela improvise a bilingual trumpet solo of obscenities to blast the faces of the boys ci [...]
The Emily Clark Balch Prizes and the Staige D. Blackford Prize were created to honor the best writing to appear in the pages of VQR each year. Past recipients include John Berryman, Philip Caputo, Pauline W. Chen, Carolyn Forché, Natasha Treth [...]
Joy seems hard to sustain these days if you’re paying close enough attention to the world around you. A somber mood with which to kick off a Summer Fiction issue, but it lands amid crises both familiar and new.
At a certain point, I lost you. I came to know it first as a weather, the earliest hour of day breaking on the bedsilk, its low rung of light, a pregnant silence.
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