As we wave goodbye to the summer 2025 edition of VICE magazine: The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue, here is a selection of some of the standout contributors who made it arguably the best issue of a magazine released in the last three decades.
What more could you need—perhaps the actual, physical version to hold in your hands and cradle lovingly? A thick and glossy wedge of material to pore over, filled with stunning photography, eye-opening features, and gripping interviews?
Buy the individual issue here, or subscribe to receive 4 print issues a year.
Now, please be upstanding for…
DEAN KISSICK
The first signs that Dean might be on to something special came in THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL, the monthly column he wrote for Spike Art Magazine from 2017 to 2022. These intoxicating odysseys through contemporary life felt like dispatches from the edge of a new world that was revealing itself through his writing one sentence at a time. Dean has since leant into the job of exposing the absurdity of our present moment in full, drafting fiction for Civilization and Heavy Traffic, having a rap song made about him, hosting events as a director of the alternative culture spaces EARTH in New York and LA, and writing a long editorial about today’s art scene in Harper’s that made many people extremely mad at him.
He leads out the issue with a letter from Shanghai, where he was hunting reasons for cheer while getting rough housed around the set of a new feature film he’s starring in called NULA, directed by Serbian artist Irena Haiduk.
Read Shanghai On Life, from The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue
EMMA GARLAND
Emma began working at VICE in the distant mists of the last decade, shortly after completing an MA in International Journalism that examined the use of satire as a method of nonviolent resistance by oppositional groups during conflicts in Syria, Egypt, Serbia, and Russia. She graduated with distinction, and after a spell writing hit pieces on the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ and Meghan Trainor, graduated from VICE, too, going on to bless the pages of Rolling Stone, CREEM, the Sunday Times, and more with her words.
Emma is currently working on her first book Tell All Your Friends: A Cultural History of Mainstream Emo 2000-2013, and has carved a niche as a sex writer of the rarest poise and profundity, advancing viscerally felt theories on love and desire at her cult Substack, Gabrielle. For this issue, she wrote about different types of Gen Z fetishist, including people who fantasize about being swallowed whole by arseholes.
Read The VICE Guide to the Sex Tribes of 2025, from The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue
RANA PANDEY
For the last issue, Rana photographed widows forced to live in exile in remote parts of the Indian mangrove forests because their husbands were eaten by tigers. For this issue, he did a tour of West Bengal, where he watched dancing men cavort at dawn with bodies they’d raided from infant graves.
We shudder to think what he’s going to be doing in the next issue, and we worry for him generally, but he insists he loves his work, which has taken him a long way from his home in Kolkata and quietly earned him a few major international awards along the way. When he’s not doing something harrowing, you’ll find him playing football in the nearest field.
Read Indian Death Party, from The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue
ALLEE ERRICO
Allee is a cartoonist and diva who’s currently re-reading all of Animorphs. They’ve got a book of auto-bio comics out called froggie.world Vol. 1: Love Angel Music Bike, which is mostly about riding bikes, listening to Black Sabbath, and surviving in New York.
When not relishing the pain and solitude of drawing comics, Allee enjoys using power tools, thinking about the infrastructure, and, especially while on the bus, smoking, spitting, and radio playing. They live in Ridgewood, Queens with their dog Sardine, and inside the back cover of each issue of VICE.
Read Allee Errico’s Page, from The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue
THE PROPHET ABRAHAM
Widely regarded as the Father of monotheism, The Prophet Abraham overcame troublesome early family issues to earn himself mentions in not just one but three Holy books, each of which pays testament to his blind faith in the existence of one true God. An idol-demolishing, immolation-defying tour de force, The Prophet Abraham leads out a star-studded cast in this issue’s fashion story, shot by longtime VICE photographer Jamie Lee Taete in Tijuana, Mexico.
Read Wax With Drip, from The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue
In case you were wondering, everyone here contributed to the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine: The Reasons to Be Cheerful Issue. You can buy the individual issue, or subscribe and get 4 issues delivered to your door each year.
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