It’s another 288 page beast. The theme is religion and the supernatural. The cover is by Art Spiegelman. Some totally famous comic book artist whose name I don’t remember illustrated several stories. We have a trio of fiction pieces that involves superpowers. There’s a long article about Pat Robertson. There’s a big essay about AIDS in Jamaica with some brilliant photos. Chris Ware provides another installment in his Jordan W. Lint series. We include some never-before-published work by Ezra Pound, written for the Richmond News Leader back in the late 1950s. And we’ve got poetry by Ted Kooser, Charles Simic, Charles Wright, Billy Collins, and a great poem by science fiction writer Michael Bishop, the father of the Jamie Bishop, the German teacher who was murdered at Virginia Tech. There’s an announcement about a contest that we’re holding, but I’ll keep that a secret for now. And lots of other stuff.

It goes to press next week and comes out April 1. (The lag time is just beastly.) I’m thinking about sitting Ted down to record a discussion with him about the new issue — how it came together, stories behind how some articles came to be, etc. — and post it to our blog. Maybe I should do that.

Waldo, I heard good things about you at New Dominion Bookshop the other night. Now that I’ve buttered you up, can you give us a preview of the spring issue??

I want a photo of Ted next to Ze Frank with Ze’s trademark crazy grin on his face. Autographed. By Nick Hornby.