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The Believer
@thebeliever.net
A quarterly literature, arts, and culture magazine.
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Our first-ever Sports Issue is coming soon! Featuring
@minakimes.bsky.social, Kiese Laymon, Jenny Odell, @lauravandenberg.bsky.social, a custom Believer-branded swim cap, and much more.

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This week, new subscribers will receive a bonus grab bag of five back issues of the magazine along with their first issue—our first-ever sports-themed edition. Subscribe now!

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The Believer Subscription
This week only: Believer subscriptions include a randomized grab bag of five classic issues, absolutely free. A thirteen-time National Magazine Award finalist. Named the best magazine of 2022 by Alta...
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December 8, 2025 at 10:48 PM
"It’s the setting, and the sense memory of moving through the landscape of the book, that stays with me far longer than names of characters or details of plot."

—Karen Russell, interviewed by Stephanie Palumbo

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An Interview with Karen Russell - Believer Magazine
“IT WILL KILL YOU, AND IT NEVER KNEW YOUR NAME.” An Interview with Karen Russell About Her Syllabus This is part of a series of conversations with writers who teach, where we discuss how they develop ...
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December 8, 2025 at 7:48 PM
"A writer needs not to forget that she is a reader first and foremost."

—Elif Shafak, interviewed by @kayagenc.bsky.social

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An Interview with Elif Shafak - Believer Magazine
I first met Elif Shafak in 2000, at the dawn of her literary career, whose success few could have predicted at the time. It was my second year at Bilgi, a liberal-arts university in Istanbul where she...
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December 8, 2025 at 4:51 PM
"We have within us all these marvelous capacities, and it’s the structure of society right now that can fool us into despair and resignation."

—Anne Boyer, interviewed by Callie Hitchcock

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December 5, 2025 at 9:23 PM
"I do not invent characters. There they are. That’s who they are."

—Edward Albee, interviewed by Linda Leseman

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An Interview with Edward Albee - Believer Magazine
Having a conversation with Edward Albee about theater, even if you’re relatively well versed in the subject, is a challenge on the level of trying to play chess with a grandmaster. It’s not just that ...
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December 5, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Cheers to Eula Biss! Her Believer essay "Love and Murder in South Africa" has been honored with a spot in The Best American Essays 2025, edited by Jia Tolentino.

Read the piece on our website:

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Love and Murder in South Africa - Believer Magazine
My first encounter with South Africa was a book, My Traitor’s Heart, which I read when I was twenty, and it was because of this book that I traveled to South Africa twenty years later. I don’t know wh...
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December 5, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by The Believer
"Bands like the Eagles presented this image of a closed group that you had to be really proficient to get into, and none of us were. We were all enamored of the Stooges and the MC5, and all the stuff that was very raw and struggling."
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Excerpts from The Believer: An Interview with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein
- - -A few pieces of creative advice shared by Debbie Harry: You can’t please everyone all the time You can never make a big enough fool of you...
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December 5, 2025 at 5:30 PM
"What anybody else ever gets to see of mine, writing-wise, is the product of a kind of Darwinian struggle in which only things that are emphatically alive to me are worth finishing."

—David Foster Wallace, interviewed by Dave Eggers

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An Interview with David Foster Wallace - Believer Magazine
David Foster Wallace is from east-central Illinois, and this is a large part of his appeal. In addition, he has written a number of books. Among them are the story collections Girl with Curious Hair a...
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December 4, 2025 at 10:19 PM
It's a great time to catch up on issues you missed. Head to the McSweeney's store before the end of the week for 50% off all back issues of The Believer.

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December 4, 2025 at 6:31 PM
"The team’s story was an essential one, I argued—an American story, a Somali story, a narrative of migration and integration, xenophobia and community, sports and brotherhood."

—@wtmcgrath on a high school basketball team from Cedar-Riverside

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American Boys - Believer Magazine
Listen to this story: Cedar-Riverside was humming. The boys were looking fresh—Frenchy with his hair twisted up, Saiid’s beard trimmed tight—everybody edged up and faded up and straight from the barbe...
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December 4, 2025 at 3:07 PM
"Given the right time and place, I would’ve fallen for LuLaRoe in a heartbeat."

—Rafael Frumkin's new column on the women's clothing brand that was ruled an illegal pyramid scheme

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High-Control Goods: LuLaRoe Leggings - Believer Magazine
Here’s a sentence I bet you don’t read very often: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed my loudly patterned leggings from the family-owned alleged pyramid scheme otherwise known as LuLaRoe. I purchas...
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December 3, 2025 at 6:19 PM
We're stretching our Cyber Monday deal all week, in what may be the first documented case of "Monday all week" actually sounding like good news. Visit our website to get 50% off all back issues of The Believer, the Quarterly, and Illustoria.

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December 3, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Our upcoming Sports Issue comes with a custom, professional-grade swim cap. This stylish accessory is for subscribers only, so don't miss out—pick up a subscription today.
December 3, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Today we're remembering the talented Tom Stoppard, whose vitality and always-fresh perspective made every line in every conversation feel new. In this 2005 interview, this quality is on full display.

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An Interview with Tom Stoppard - Believer Magazine
Tom Stoppard was born in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, and came to England in 1946. His major plays include Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), and Travesties (1974). Every Go...
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December 2, 2025 at 10:13 PM
Congratulations to Elisa Gabbert and @paulcollins.bsky.social—whose essays "Fear as a Game" and "Why Can't My Son Vote?" earned honorable mentions in this year's Best American Essays series, curated by @jiatolentino.bsky.social. Open this thread for links to the essays.
December 2, 2025 at 7:32 PM
“I like all kinds of people. I grew up in Bombay, a city where if you don’t like people you’re going to be extremely unhappy.”

—Suketu Mehta, interviewed by Karan Mahajan

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An Interview with Suketu Mehta - Believer Magazine
Writing a novel “about” Bombay is undeniably a preposterous project. One could safely brick a house with recent Bombay tomes. But to set out to interview the city—as Suketu Mehta did for his book Maxi...
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December 2, 2025 at 3:16 PM
“What I’ve been intentional toward for the last bunch of years was freedom in my work and a sense of letting go of the idea of right and wrong, the idea of getting anything right.”

—Andrew Garfield, interviewed by Esmé Weijun Wang

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An Interview with Andrew Garfield - Believer Magazine
I first became interested in Andrew Garfield and his work not from his starring role in the two big-budget Amazing Spider-Man films (2012, 2014), nor from his famous laptop-smashing scene in David Fin...
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December 1, 2025 at 10:13 PM
Happy Cyber Monday! All week long, back issues of The Believer, Quarterly, and Illustoria are marked down by 50%. There's no better time to catch up on issues you missed.

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December 1, 2025 at 6:59 PM
"When we talk about writing we always assume that we are building or creating things. But it is also about destroying things."

—Elif Shafak, interviewed by Kaya Genç
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An Interview with Elif Shafak - Believer Magazine
I first met Elif Shafak in 2000, at the dawn of her literary career, whose success few could have predicted at the time. It was my second year at Bilgi, a liberal-arts university in Istanbul where she...
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December 1, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Thanksgiving has passed, but here’s one more thing to appreciate: 33% off all McSweeney’s subscriptions. Grab yours before the deal ends tonight!
November 28, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Literary journalism makes a great gift for the holidays—get your shopping done this Black Friday and take 33% off of gift subscriptions to the magazine, applied at checkout.

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Believer Magazine Gift Subscription
This is the page for a Believer Gift Subscription. At checkout please use your own address for confirmation, upon purchasing you'll be sent a link to fill out all subscription details for your giftee(...
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November 28, 2025 at 7:50 PM
To the tryptophan-weary souls in need of a post-Thanksgiving pick-me-up: subscriptions to The Believer are 33% off (applied at checkout). New subscribers will start with our first-ever Sports Issue, which comes with a custom Believer-branded swim cap.
November 28, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Happy Black Friday! Today only, take advantage of 33% off all subscriptions to The Believer—that’s a full year of essays, interviews, poems, and more for just $40.20. Discount applied at checkout.
November 28, 2025 at 2:53 PM
"Large as they figured in the first Thanksgiving, as of 1851 there was nary one to be seen in my home state of Massachusetts. And yet now they once again rival the bunny rabbit in multiplication enthusiasm."

—Gish Jen on the wild turkey

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Animal: Wild Turkey - Believer Magazine
FEATURES: Runs almost as fast as Usain Bolt, albeit in bursts Flies faster than most hummingbirds,albeit in bursts Gobbles, purrs, yelps, chirps, clicks, and kee-kees It is a truth, if not universally...
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November 27, 2025 at 4:03 PM
"While members implicitly commit to bringing home an income well below the poverty line by joining East Wind, they appear to be making a trade in favor of an all-natural idyll."
—Rafael Frumkin on the East Wind Community and their signature peanut butter
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High-Control Goods: East Wind Peanut Butter - Believer Magazine
Let me begin by saying that the peanut butter made by the East Wind Community—an intentional community on 1,145 acres of land in the rural Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri—is probably the best pea...
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November 26, 2025 at 4:58 PM