The Believer 151 (Autumn 2025)

From Illustoria's parent publishers at McSweeney's In Issue 151 of The Believer: Ash Sanders reports from a performance art festival on the dried-up shore of California’s biggest—and most toxic—lake; Mona Kareem unpacks her father’s attempts to assemble the perfect personal library; Heather Christle attends the largest-ever solo exhibition of Bloomsbury Group painter Vanessa Bell; and Oliver Egger spends an uncanny day in Spring City, Pennsylvania, where a former state institution now doubles as a disability museum and haunted Halloween attraction. You’ll also find conversations with Blondie; Laura van den Berg; Jamila Woods; The Handmaiden screenwriter Chung Seo-kyung; and British comedian Richard Ayoade, who talks to Wallace Shawn about seriousness, failure, and the parodic form. In addition, these chartreuse-trimmed pages include Peter Orner’s literary interpretation of an old family photograph; Nathaniel Rich’s visit to a forest that appears on no maps; and one soap-related aphorism for a needful reader