BOMB 172 / Summer 2025

Our new issue features an interview with Ocean Vuong by Björk, a conversation between Lucy Dacus and McKinley Dixon, new fiction from Catherine Lacey, and so much more.

The art collective CFGNY, whose work is featured on our cover, talks about their commitment to communal ways of being and working with artist Guadalupe Rosales.  

Ocean Vuong speaks with Icelandic icon Björk about his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, and the importance of “kindness without hope.”

Hiroshi Sugimoto welcomes CERN physicist James Beacham to his Enoura Observatory in Odawara, Japan, and shares how his experiments in photography, sculpture, and architecture are inspired by science and natural history.

In their interview—introduced by Hanif Abdurraqib—musicians Lucy Dacus and McKinley Dixon reminisce on their college years in the Richmond, Virginia, independent and DIY scene, and the making of their latest albums, Forever Is a Feeling and Magic, Alive!

Jennifer Kabat discusses her nonfiction diptych, Nightshining and The Eighth Moon, with Laura Marris and reveals how she uncovered the roots of American socialism in upstate New York.

Leading Mexican architect Gabriella Carrillo speaks with Fernanda Canales about the possibilities for architecture and public space to respond to communities in times of crisis.

With the artist Dawoud Bey, saxophonist and bandleader Lakecia Benjamin recounts the many collaborations with legendary jazz musicians that led to the making of her critically acclaimed albums Pursuance: The Coltranes and Phoenix.

In our latest Oral History Project excerpt, photographer Jules Allen, interviewed by his son Basie Allen, emphasizes how making good photographs comes from maintaining a disciplined practice.

Artist Virginia Jaramillo talks with Michelle White about the material experimentations that have sustained her sixty-plus year practice and the experiences that have inspired her leaps into new methods for making art.

Plus new work by Catherine Lacey, Ed Park, Rose Keating, Brian Buckbee with Carol Ann Fitzgerald, Solomon Brager and charles theonia, Catherine Weiss, Emily Lee Luan, Elliott Puckette—and more.