The Believer, Issue 56: September 2008

The Believer #56

by Vendela Vida (Editor), Ed Park (Editor)

The Believer is an amiable yet rigorous forum for book criticism, providing an alternative to the plot summary squib that has become synonymous with "book review." Each issue includes interviews with philosophers, politicians, poets, and ninjas. Nick Hornby has a widely celebrated books column, and Amy Sedaris (as well as well-known guest-columnists) offers hilariously bad advice. The celebrated graphic novelist Charles Burns illustrates the cover each month, and the magazine is packaged with a tactile and varying bonus item — a CD, DVD, temporary tattoos, and so on.

88 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Vendela Vida is the award-winning author of four books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers, and a founding editor of The Believer magazine. She is also the co-editor of Always Apprentices, a collection of interviews with writers, and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. As a fellow at the Sundance Labs, she developed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name into a script, which received the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award. Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the year, and she is the winner of the Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two children, and since 2002 has served on the board of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring lab for youth.