As part of its annual, increasingly authoritative "Top 10 Everything" year-end special, Time dubbed the Fall 2008 edition of the Virginia Quarterly Review one of the "Top 10 Magazine Covers" of 2008. Ninth overall, in fact—edged out by the September issue of Los Angeles, but victorious over the September issue of Mad, which features a character named "Alfred E. Obama." Zing!
Time art director Arthur Hochstein gives the cover image—a photograph by Ashley Gilbertson, interviewed here in C-VILLE—praise for its mix of focus and distance. "The dead victim is vivid and alive in the dream of his sister, whose life may have lost focus because of her profound loss," writes Hochstein. See the cover below, in all its critically acclaimed glory!:
Ooh! Aah! The Fall 2008 VQR gets some well-deserved love from Time.
Time’s praise is the most recent feather in the VQR’s cap, but Feedback came across another this weekend: Two stories from past VQR issues were reprinted as part of this year’s Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology, selected by a committe of high school students. Read their discussion of J. Malcolm Garcia‘s "The White Train" here, and read a second selection, Helen Habila’s "The Hotel Malogo," here.