Kudu's To VQR!

Pow! Another home run from my favorite literary quarterly. Once a quiet little backwater publication with poems and fiction, it has transformed itself into one of the most ambitious and engaging university based magazines out there. VQR (Virginia Quarterly Review) chooses a theme and works it with outstanding prose and photos that make National Greographic look like yesterday's news. The summer 2009 issue features articles on the people of the middle east. You go to the Gaza Strip, you read about the history of the West Bank, Beruit, Lebabnon, Sadr City, and the images are simply stunning.

But more there are still amazing poems and fiction, criticism and a graphic novella--AND an amazing photo-essay of the young mothers of Port-au-Prince, Haiti! Favorite past issues have included a thorough celebration of Darwin and the theory of evolution, the effects of global warming on the worlds most vulnerable mountain cultures from Nepal to Peru, the cultural impact of the petroleum industry in equitorial Africa, and the world that is Cuba under Castro. Every 3 months, the arrival of VQR is like a little Christmas morning 4 times a year.