We are not the sort to lie about our age: this marks our 50^th issue. It seemed fitting to celebrate this landmark with writing devoted to all things Beautiful. What intrigues us about the subject is the weird, unique nature inherent in beauty, for, as Francis Bacon put it: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” Novelist and critic Marilynne Robinson, not known to shy away from a challenging topic, brilliantly essays the notion of beauty and its role in our changing society. Poet Crystal Williams views the subject through the kaleidoscopic lens of race, while Aimee Bender talks with the artist Amy Cutler, whose off-kilter, imaginative work boils in the same cauldron as Bender’s fictions. The poets, naturally, are well-represented here, happily joining the ancient poetic cause. And just as unsurprisingly, the prose writers turn the notions of beauty inside out. Maggie Shipstead chronicles a former child star’s fall from drug-addled “It girl” to cult bride and the subsequent awful, yet quiet, aftermath. Michel Houellebecq sinks his teeth into the art world, ripping it to nasty little pieces, while Eric Puchner spins a youth-only future, and Quintan Ana Wikswo re-creates the troubled world of Nazi infanticide. We were also delighted by beautiful math, Mumbai bar dancers, the science of sex, and even the letters of Burt Reynolds. We hope you find the issue as strange and as beautiful as we do.