Spring/Summer 2023

This special double issue of VQR features our biggest photo portfolio to date. “The Queens of Queens City” is photographer Michael Snyder’s longform photo documentary—nearly a decade in the making—of the lives of drag queens in Cumberland, Maryland, in northern Appalachia. Accompanied by an essay by oral historian Rae Garringer, this project is an immersive narrative that tells the story of Cumberland’s drag troupe, from extravagant performances to the frenzy of backstage and even the quietly prosaic moments of daily life. In doing so, it also offers a more complex picture of a region too often narrowly defined as rigidly conservative, but whose culture and politics are much more nuanced. The issue also includes fiction by Paul Yoon, Lydia Davis, Ximena Blanco, Eleni Linas, and Fredrick Kunkle. Essays by Roger Reeves, William Todd Schultz, Alessandra Colaianni, and Diane Mehta. There’s also reporting by Meg Bernhard on an increasingly popular but just as controversial form of psychotherapy known as EMDR. With poetry by Colin Channer, Anders Carlson-Wee, Shara Lessley, Jesse Nathan, and Carol Moldaw.