The National Magazine Award-winning Believer returns with a spectacular year-end issue.

Inside our winter issue: Tana Wojcuk crisscrosses the country to understand America’s enduring Shakespeare obsession; Ashley Nelson-Levy kneels before a little known patron saint of artists and writers; Chelsea Edgar profiles an accidental town historian in Randolph, Vermont; and, in São Paulo, Clement Gelly becomes immersed in the world pixação, a distinctly Brazilian form of graffiti whose practitioners go to extreme lengths to paint their tags.

We also have conversations with the singular musician Tori Amos; Pulitzer Prize–winning author Yiyun Li; Swedish-born indie artist Jens Lekman; and writer Colin Winnette, who is interviewed by Annihilation’s Jeff VanderMeer; not to mention a microinterview with Haitian poet Jamal Noël, and two brand new comics by acclaimed cartoonists Amy Kurzweil and Lee Lai.

Elsewhere in these pastelled pages you’ll find a resurrection of Walter Murch’s terrifying Return to Oz, Nick Hornby’s notes on Middlemarch, a trip to Dolly Parton’s truck stop, Peter Orner on a shattering 1990 novel, and an eye-catching schematic of optical devices. For tireless readers such as yourself, may we also offer reviews of Nikki Ervice, Sevgi Soysal, and Rebecca Perry’s Booker-shortlisted May We Feed the King; the working hours of Maya Angelou and Kurt Vonnegut; Norwegian cheese; Twitch streams; poems—and so much more!