Each issue of the quarterly is completely redesigned. There have been hardcovers and paperbacks, an issue with two spines, an issue with a magnetic binding, an issue that looked like a bundle of junk mail, and an issue that looked like a sweaty human head McSweeney's has won multiple literary awards, including two National Magazine Awards for fiction, and has had numerous stories appear in The Best American Magazine Writing, the O. Henry Awards anthologies, and The Best American Short Stories Design awards given to the quarterly include the AIGA 50 Books Award, the AIGA 365 Illustration Award, and the Print Design Regional Award
Packed in Issue 53's purpose-built plastic bag are eight stories printed on party balloons, which one must blow up to read. Gracing these particolored balloons are arresting new stories from Carmen Maria Machado, Percival Everett, Lauren Groff, Kima Jones, Amelia Gray, Rebecca Makkai, and Sarah Wisby. You'll also find, alongside these eight inflatable stories, a vinyl-bound hardcover book containing electrostatically charged new work from Lesley Nneka Arimah, Jamie Figueroa, Namwali Serpell, C Pam Zhang, and many more besides. Perfect for decorating a birthday party, reading and then popping as a zen meditation, or repeatedly blowing up and releasing in order to observe their whimsical flight around the room, these balloons will provide endless enrichment. Inside Issue 53 you'll uncover a medically inexplicable hunger for forks, a world of unclothed single women, a bevy of dead dads infesting a city, a mystical power within the dismembered torso of a mummified bishop, and oh so much more.
Packed in Issue 53's purpose-built plastic bag are eight stories printed on party balloons, which one must blow up to read. Gracing these particolored balloons are arresting new stories from Carmen Maria Machado, Percival Everett, Lauren Groff, Kima Jones, Amelia Gray, Rebecca Makkai, and Sarah Wisby. You'll also find, alongside these eight inflatable stories, a vinyl-bound hardcover book containing electrostatically charged new work from Lesley Nneka Arimah, Jamie Figueroa, Namwali Serpell, C Pam Zhang, and many more besides. Perfect for decorating a birthday party, reading and then popping as a zen meditation, or repeatedly blowing up and releasing in order to observe their whimsical flight around the room, these balloons will provide endless enrichment. Inside Issue 53 you'll uncover a medically inexplicable hunger for forks, a world