Vendela Vida Explores The Lovers, The Believer, & Screenwriting

By Jason Boog 

vv2323.jpgAs literary journals around the country struggle to update for the 21st Century, one founding co-editor at The Believer maintains a nearly exclusive print-focused strategy.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Vendela Vida, author of the new novel The Lovers and a founding co-editor at The Believer.

Vida talked about her novel, her intentional lack of Internet access at home, and The Believer‘s print-oriented strategy. She also shared the screenwriting experience and advice she learned while writing Away We Go with her husband, Dave Eggers.

Vida explained the print strategy: “The Believer hasn’t changed at all. I think we still like to pretend that nothing’s changed and put out the same magazine we’ve always put out. Obviously we have a website, but it’s not an integral part of our magazine. I feel like the magazine could exist without the website except that people like to go there and find back issues and back pieces. We try to be as oblivious to all the changes going on as we can be.”


She concluded: “Readers that we have and the readers that we’ve met all really just love the physical object of The Believer. They are all people who were originally drawn to it because of the design and the feel of it … I think a lot of the people who like The Believer are people who will always be devoutly attached to the physical object of the magazine.”

FULL DISCLOSURE: This GalleyCat editor has written for The Believer.