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The Believer
@thebeliever.net
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A quarterly literature, arts, and culture magazine. https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/the-believer-subscription-bm4 thebeliever.net
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 23d
Our fall issue is out today! Here’s what you’ll find inside.

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Fall 2025 - Believer Magazine
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 1d
“My father believed that rich people did not, and could not, read. If they were wealthy, then they must be happy. If they were happy, why would they read?”

—Mona Kareem on her father’s pursuit of a perfect personal library

www.thebeliever.net/the-labyrinth/
The Labyrinth - Believer Magazine
When it came to books, my father had absolutely no shame. On his first day at the ten-day Kuwait International Book Fair, he’d pile stacks of books at a publisher’s booth and ask him to keep the books...
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 1d
Today's Excerpt from our pals over at @thebeliever.net is more sound advice from Carrie Brownstein.
Excerpts from The Believer: Ask Carrie: Fall 2025
A QUARTERLY column from Carrie Brownstein, who is better at dispensing advice than taking it - - -Q: I’m an adult. I bathe. And yet people keep gi...
buff.ly
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 1d
"Those people you can turn to and high-five, those relationships are special."

—Laura van den Berg, interviewed by @rokwon.bsky.social

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Laura van den Berg - Believer Magazine
The first time I read Laura van den Berg’s stories in her debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, I was astonished. The stories, teeming with disaster and fantast...
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 2d
Congratulations to 2025 Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai!

Visit our website to read Laura Preston's review of his recent novella:

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A Review of A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East - Believer Magazine
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 2d
"While making Water Made Us, I had a long period of wandering. It was stressful because I was like, Why is this taking so long? But I realized I had to let myself surrender to the time that the process takes."

—Jamila Woods, interviewed by Sam Sax

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Jamila Woods - Believer Magazine
Jamila Woods is a polymath: a multi-hyphenate artist, a teacher, a student, a singer, and your favorite poet’s favorite musician. Born and raised in Chicago, Jamila has released three critically accla...
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 2d
"Both Woolf and her older sister, Vanessa Bell, knew well the dangers of becoming stuck in that role, forever passing tea and buns about the room, never speaking beyond decorum’s limits."

— @heatherchristle.bsky.social essay on Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell

www.thebeliever.net/vanessa-bell...
Vanessa Bell Is Not at Home - Believer Magazine
In Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, which celebrated its centennial in May, the title character remembers a friend mocking her years before; the young Clarissa had the makings, jeered Peter Walsh...
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 3d
"The film’s richly visualized, narratively-sparse mixture of stop-motion with some live-action is really its own beast, acting as a technological step forward."

—Chris Molnar on a new film from the Quay Brothers

www.thebeliever.net/where-is-the...
Where Is the Art House? (Part V) - Believer Magazine
When I told him that I had just seen the new Quay Brothers at Film Forum, my friend (and one of The Believer’s early film writers) B. Kite surprised me by lapsing into reverie, describing his first tr...
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 3d
Have something to say to fellow readers of The Believer? Classified ads are now $1/word.

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Believer Classified Ad
To purchase a classified ad, please use the quantity window to your right to select the number of words in your chosen message. Now you too can know the thrill of seeing your words in print, thanks t...
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 3d
"It’s the deranged heights to which Assayas pushes the ghost story in Shopper that makes it one of his best."

Chris Molnar attends an Olivier Assayas retrospective at the Metrograph. Read his review here:

www.thebeliever.net/where-is-the...
Where Is the Art House? (Part IV) - Believer Magazine
In the balcony of the old warehouse at 7 Ludlow, we are having trouble getting through. It’s pitch black as the movie begins, and the barrier is knee-high, and the fellow near us is trying to explain ...
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 3d
“There has been no comprehensive effort to memorialize America’s hundreds of former state institutions.” One state school, now a museum by day and haunted attraction by night, attempts to strike a delicate balance between memorialization and spectacle.

www.thebeliever.net/the-haunting...
The Haunting of Pennhurst - Believer Magazine
I arrived at Pennhurst on an unusually warm fall day. As I walked across the parking lot, the administration building was the first thing to greet me. An impressive redbrick monument of Jacobean reviv...
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 4d
"The museum was a revelation. Works by painters whose names I’d never heard of depicted Uzbek grazing lands in improbable shades of pink and blue."

—Michael Snyder on the the Nukus Museum of Art

www.thebeliever.net/place-the-nu...
Place: The Nukus Museum of Art - Believer Magazine
FEATURES: Ossuary jars Anti-revolutionary painting Toxic dust Solastalgia It was a cold, dry night in April, and a crowd had gathered in the center of Nukus, the capital of the Central Asian Republic ...
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 4d
Have you read through all of the fall '25 issue yet? Check out the full offerings here:

www.thebeliever.net/product/fall...
Fall 2025 - Believer Magazine
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 4d
"When I write stories, I always ask myself, Could this story have happened to people one or two thousand years ago? I want to put the forces or powers that existed a thousand years ago into stories set in a modern context."

—Chung Seo-kyung

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Chung Seo-kyung - Believer Magazine
Chung Seo-kyung may be an unfamiliar name even to those who are deeply familiar with her work, which includes cult-favorite Korean films like Lady Vengeance (2005); I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006);...
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 4d
"When we asked people about the Salton Sea, everyone told us the same things: First, the sea was in serious trouble; and second, if we wanted to understand it, we had to meet Irondad."

—from "The Last Resort," an essay by Ash Sanders

www.thebeliever.net/the-last-res...
The Last Resort - Believer Magazine
Listen to this story: It is easy to miss California’s biggest environmental disaster. Driving north on Highway 111, you wouldn’t expect to find an inland sea. If it’s summer, the thermometer in your c...
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 5d
“In most cases I’m threatening myself by putting my shit out there for somebody to step on, or step in. That’s what performance is all about.”

—Debbie Harry of @blondieband.bsky.social, interviewed by Emma Ingrisani

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein - Believer Magazine
As my plans to interview Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie for The Believer first took shape, billboards sprang up, as if on cue, around Manhattan. Sprawled several stories high was Harry’s imag...
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 5d
"On the Calculation of Volume is ultimately about time, in all its guises—time as change and repetition, as history and memory, as materiality and disappearances."

—Meghan Racklin on Book III of Solvej Balle's series

www.thebeliever.net/a-review-of-...
A Review of On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) - Believer Magazine
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 5d
Two days until this exciting event with Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean Greer at the Sydney Goldstein Theater. Get your tickets here: www.cityboxoffice.com/ordertickets...

@cityartssf.bsky.social
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 5d
"I think music has a healing ability to bring us from the space of what we know to what we don’t know."

—Jamila Woods, interviewed by Sam Sax

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Jamila Woods - Believer Magazine
Jamila Woods is a polymath: a multi-hyphenate artist, a teacher, a student, a singer, and your favorite poet’s favorite musician. Born and raised in Chicago, Jamila has released three critically accla...
www.thebeliever.net
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 8d
"He spent the next decade collecting textiles, jewelry, and carved wooden trunks that Karakalpak people in hamlets across the region had hidden away... Villagers knew him, affectionately, as 'the junkman.'"

—Michael Snyder on the founder of the Nukus Museum

www.thebeliever.net/place-the-nu...
Place: The Nukus Museum of Art - Believer Magazine
FEATURES: Ossuary jars Anti-revolutionary painting Toxic dust Solastalgia It was a cold, dry night in April, and a crowd had gathered in the center of Nukus, the capital of the Central Asian Republic ...
www.thebeliever.net
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 8d
“A bar of soap is but a cantaloupe.”

An aphorism coined by Carrie Brownstein in her latest advice column. Learn the meaning behind this beguiling phrase in her Fall 2025 installment of Ask Carrie:

www.thebeliever.net/ask-carrie-f...
Ask Carrie: Fall 2025 - Believer Magazine
Q: I’m an adult. I bathe. And yet people keep giving me soap. My mom slipped a bar into my Easter basket this year. My best friend gifted me a bourbon-scented soap for my birthday. My dad found some a...
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 8d
"What I came to understand is that it’s not as simple as: You kill the old self and you just move on. That old self is going to haunt the shit out of you one day."

—Laura van den Berg, interviewed by @rokwon.bsky.social

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Laura van den Berg - Believer Magazine
The first time I read Laura van den Berg’s stories in her debut collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, I was astonished. The stories, teeming with disaster and fantast...
www.thebeliever.net
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 9d
“A man wrote me a letter from prison that included very specific details about my life. / When he told me he was my grandfather, I knew it was impossible, but I still believed him.”

—from “The Letter,” a new poem by Gabrielle Bates

www.thebeliever.net/the-letter/
The Letter - Believer Magazine
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 9d
“The vibe is nostalgic, carefree. But where is the water? You turn around and around. On every side of you, dust.”

Ash Sanders visits Bombay Beach, a town on the edge of the Salton Sea, for a postapocalyptic arts festival. Read or listen to the full piece:
www.thebeliever.net/the-last-res...
The Last Resort - Believer Magazine
Listen to this story: It is easy to miss California’s biggest environmental disaster. Driving north on Highway 111, you wouldn’t expect to find an inland sea. If it’s summer, the thermometer in your c...
www.thebeliever.net
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 9d
"When I develop characters, I don’t start from an external point of view... I think of the character as a seed that grows within me."

—Chung Seo-kyung, interviewed by Natalie So

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Chung Seo-kyung - Believer Magazine
Chung Seo-kyung may be an unfamiliar name even to those who are deeply familiar with her work, which includes cult-favorite Korean films like Lady Vengeance (2005); I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006);...
www.thebeliever.net
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thebeliever.net
The Believer @thebeliever.net · 9d
“It’s so perfect to think about the process of creation as relational and cyclical: Sometimes it’s raining; sometimes the clouds are just above us and the water is evaporating.”

—Jamila Woods interviewed by Sam Sax

www.thebeliever.net/an-interview...
An Interview with Jamila Woods - Believer Magazine
Jamila Woods is a polymath: a multi-hyphenate artist, a teacher, a student, a singer, and your favorite poet’s favorite musician. Born and raised in Chicago, Jamila has released three critically accla...
www.thebeliever.net
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