VQR Online

On April 1, 2014, Andrew Chastain joined Jack Hitt onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions...

He walks back from the
                                         window in half-shadow

a half-shade himself

When literary promise is not enough

Not long ago, Syria’s prospects were looking good—tourism was rising, restrictions on the economy were being relaxed, and a historically icy relationship with the United States was (very) slowly thawing out. But the Arab Spring protests...

In one of the harshest camps for refugees of the Syrian conflict, even the best intentions can backfire.

I have come to realize how much I have, throughout my life, bought into the narrative of this alluring myth of personal responsibility and excellence. I realize how much I believe that all good things will come if I—if we—just work hard...

Two seats away, my father watched
the tenor study the world that rumbled
parallel to his window: crumbling

Until her father died, Sissy Willard’s parents took her and her two brothers out of school every year at the end of April to spend a week in Kitty Hawk, and every year they stayed in the same old beachfront high-rise, the Ocean Vista.

Self-doubt can be a writer’s best friend or mortal enemy. It all depends on how one directs the inner uncertainty that is the constant companion of every wordsmith who puts pen to paper for a living.

The discovery of that kiss changed me. Reading, which had seemed a retreat from the world, was suddenly more vital, dangerous, and necessary.