The Believer

The Believer
Title	The Believer
Editor	David Sedaris
Category	Literary magazine
Firstdate	2003
Country	United States
Language	English
Based	San Francisco

The Believer

The Believer is a literary magazine founded in 2003 noted for longform interviews, essays, and criticism involving contemporary writers and artists across North America and Europe. It has published work by and about figures from fiction, poetry, music, film, and visual art, engaging with contributors associated with McSweeney's, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Granta, and The Paris Review. The magazine's pages have featured conversations with or essays on figures connected to institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, Oxford University, and Cambridge University.

Overview

The Believer presents interviews, essays, and reviews spotlighting authors, filmmakers, musicians, and cultural figures like David Foster Wallace, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, and Toni Morrison. It publishes pieces on directors and actors associated with Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Greta Gerwig, Alfred Hitchcock, and Steven Spielberg, alongside profiles of musicians linked to Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Madonna (entertainer), and Kendrick Lamar. The magazine has engaged with poets and critics connected to T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Langston Hughes, and it has paid attention to visual artists in the orbit of Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, and Frida Kahlo.

Publication History

Founded by editors associated with McSweeney's and The Paris Review, the magazine launched in the early 2000s with backing from literary figures including Dave Eggers, Chris Ware, Ed Park, and Vendela Vida. Early issues featured interviews with authors from HarperCollins, Penguin Books, Random House, Faber and Faber, and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Distribution partnerships involved independent bookstores connected to Powell's Books, Barnes & Noble, and networks such as Small Press Distribution. The magazine's production and editorial practices intersected with conferences and festivals like Litquake, BookExpo America, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Brooklyn Book Festival, and Hay Festival. Over time editorial stewardship moved through various figures with ties to San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, and The Washington Post.

Themes and Analysis

Recurring themes include authorship and creativity as discussed in relation to Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. Essays analyze narrative technique with reference to novels such as Infinite Jest, To the Lighthouse, Beloved (novel), 1984 (novel), and Midnight's Children, while criticism engages film texts like Citizen Kane, Rashomon, Battleship Potemkin, The Godfather, and Pulp Fiction. The magazine situates cultural artifacts within debates involving institutions such as Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Guggenheim Museum, and LACMA. Discussions often bring in thinkers and critics from Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, and Judith Butler.

Critical Reception

Reviews in outlets like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and Slate (magazine) have praised the magazine's interviews and eclectic taste, while others in The Nation, London Review of Books, The Economist, New Statesman, and Vulture (website) have critiqued its perceived eccentricities. Awards and nominations relate to lists compiled by National Book Critics Circle, PEN America, Pulitzer Prize, and recognition in year-end compilations by Time (magazine), Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and The Washington Post. Academic attention has appeared in journals associated with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Princeton University Press, and Columbia University Press.

Adaptations and Influence

Pieces originally published in the magazine have been adapted into radio segments and podcasts linked to NPR, BBC Radio 4, This American Life, Radiolab, and The Moth, and some longform interviews have been expanded into books published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Little, Brown and Company, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Bloomsbury Publishing. Contributors have gone on to write screenplays or collaborate with filmmakers such as Noah Baumbach, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ava DuVernay, Bong Joon-ho, and Spike Lee, and musicians profiled later referenced their coverage in liner notes for albums on labels like Columbia Records, Atlantic Records, and Universal Music Group.

Cultural Impact

The magazine has influenced literary taste in cities and institutions including San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London, and informed curricula at universities like New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, Stanford University, and Princeton University. It played a role in shaping conversations at festivals and institutions such as South by Southwest, SXSW, TED (conference), Aspen Ideas Festival, and Kennedy Center. Its contributors have been cited in political and cultural debates involving figures from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow, and Anderson Cooper.

Bibliography and Editions

Notable collected editions and anthologies draw on work from the magazine and have been issued by McSweeney's Publishing, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Penguin Random House, Picador, and Vintage Books. Special issues and themed editions have been organized around figures and events such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Harlem Renaissance, and Beat Generation, and reprints have appeared in collaborations with Library of America and university presses including Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.

Category:Literary magazines