The Believer (magazine)
The Believer is an American quarterly magazine of interviews, essays, and reviews about books, culture, and ideas. It was started in 2003 by Heidi Julavits, Vendela Vida, and Ed Park, with design by Dave Eggers of McSweeney’s. The editors described the goal as welcoming writing that pushes beyond the usual boundaries and celebrates writers and books they like.
From 2003 to 2015, The Believer was published by McSweeney’s. Ed Park left in 2011; Julavits and Vida continued as editors. In 2017 the magazine moved to UNLV’s Beverly Rogers Black Mountain Institute.
In early 2022, UNLV announced that the February/March issue would be the final one. The university later sold The Believer to Paradise Media, a digital marketing company, which then sold it back to McSweeney’s, allowing print publication to resume.
Content and style: each issue typically includes four long interviews with writers, artists, filmmakers, and other figures, plus poetry, reviews, and a mix of regular features. Recurring columns have included Stuff I’ve Been Reading by Nick Hornby and Ask Carrie by Carrie Brownstein, among others. The Believer is known for its distinctive design, illustrations, and occasional comics that began in 2009. It also runs The Believer Books imprint, publishing books by authors connected to the magazine. The Believer awards include annual Believer Book and Poetry Awards, and readers’ picks are collected in the Believer Logger.
The magazine has published work by many notable writers and has been recognized with multiple National Magazine Award nominations. In 2021, editor Joshua Wolf Shenk resigned amid controversy, and funding changes followed, contributing to a period of turbulence before publication was restored under its original publisher.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:56 (CET).