Waldo Jaquith - The Fall 2007 VQR.

The Fall 2007 VQR.

On 5 October 2007 with 7 comments

I’ve been enormously busy for the past two weeks, preparing the Fall 2007 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review for the web. It’s just about done, and the results are just excellent. Every scrap of the issue is available online, for free, because we’re just so thrilled with it. The issue is dedicated to the topic of South America in the 21st century, a result of sending writers, photographers, and videographers across the continent; before you yawn, give it a shot.

We’ve got articles about soy displacing rain forest in Brazil, trash-picking cartoneros in Buenos Aires, a town of albinos in the mountains of Argentina, Hugo Chávez’s bloody 2002 crackdown on opposition protesters, Chiquita’s practice of running drugs and guns for Colombian terrorists, the inhabitants of the Amantani and Taquile islands in Lake Titicaca and a comic by Liniers about his trip to Antarctica. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg (though my favorite stuff).

Coolest of all, the front page of the issue’s web page is a Google map — charting the location of every article, including seven web exclusives — two articles feature videos (the cartoneros and Titicaca pieces), and every last photo can be blown up through JavaScripty goodness to a screen-filling size.

This is the most ambitious web-based reinterpretation of an issue that we’ve done yet.

7 Comments

Thanks for posting the VQR online link. I had not seen the VQR in a long time and was not sure that it was even published anymore. The new issue is very well done. Congratulations!

Posted by J. Tyler Ballance on 5 October 2007 @ 1pm

The article on Aicuña was superb. The best part was reading the same summation on kottke.org later in the day.

Also so that I won’t spam up your intertubes, nice praise for VQR’s submission system. The next item on your docket should be an a viral “dumb” AI that proliferates like the Russian zombiebots and only seeks to enforce net neutrality.

If you could also write that in common lisp that would be fantastic. :^)

Posted by Joe on 5 October 2007 @ 9pm

Waldo,

Wow. very cool. I will spread the good word.

Posted by Jon Sheridan on 6 October 2007 @ 12pm

Andrew Sullivan likes it, too.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/10/not-an-albino-t.html

Posted by Judge Smails on 7 October 2007 @ 6pm

I passed along the link for this amazing issue of VQR to a web developer friend of mine who works on mapping apps and also happens to be Chilean.

He LOVED the online work, and also strongly recommended this Peruvian author:

http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2007/summer/vargas-llosa-chilean-girls/

great work

Posted by Josh on 10 October 2007 @ 12pm

Waldo

Thanks to you and congrats to all involved in publishing this outstanding edition of VQR. Having lived and worked in Peru and Peruvian Amazonia, I was thrilled to see so many excellent articles on this severely underreported region. Almost every article struck one familiar chord or another. I’m especially pleased to see the Octopus in the Cathedral of Salt, and I’m happy to read Lonesome George is still alive and more or less well. My wife and I had the opportunity to see him in Pto. Ayora 21 years ago.

Thanks again

Jim

Posted by Jim Anderson on 10 October 2007 @ 7pm

I must call up, as always, that I have nothing to do with the writing and very little to do with the editorial decisions. (Though I’ll have more to do with each as time goes by.) So while the writing and editing are just brilliant, I only get credit for having a clever little map on the front page and a zoomy effect on the images. :)

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 10 October 2007 @ 8pm

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