Guernica is a magazine of art and ideas that author and historian Howard Zinn called "an extraordinary bouquet of stories, poems, social commentary, and art."

In its short time online, it has grown from one of the web's best-kept secrets to one of its most acclaimed new magazines. Read in over 100 countries, Guernica publishes great art, literature, and world-class journalism—including a blog that daily brings together award winning writers, cultural critics and political pundits.

What makes Guernica unique is how its cross-section of art and social commentary spurs conversation between communities often isolated from one another. Imagine a space where creative innovators (poets, painters, novelists) are given equal billing with historians, presidents, social critics, human rights experts and think tank scholars.

Contributors

"Working with Guernica was a wonderful experience, because the magazine is infused with a simple and noble purpose: to inspire complex thought, and thus encourage informed action. The magazine, and its editors, respect the life of the mind with an intensity rarely seen these days." —George Saunders

Guernica contributors come from dozens of countries and write in nearly as many languages. They include acclaimed writers like Mark Dowie, Jonathan Steele, George Szirtes, Adonis, Victoria Redel, Norman Solomon, Julian Rios, Tom Engelhardt, Alimorad Fadie Nia and Shelley Jackson, as well as brilliant younger writers like Rivka Galchen, Mark Binelli, Monica Ferrell and Laura van den Berg. Guernica guest fiction editors include Sam Lipsyte, George Saunders, Francisco Goldman and—coming soon—Ben Marcus.

But Guernica has launched brand new voices too. After the magazine published her first poem, poet Sandy Tseng wrote to say thanks, then told the editors offhand she'd won the "Discovery" Prize, awarded by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation magazine.



Guernica interviews have featured heads of state and Nobel Prize winners (Costa Rican President Oscar Arias ), lawmakers and cabinet members (Congressman John Conyers and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo) as well as writers, directors, critics, historians. Just a few of the personalities you'll find in the Interviews section: Joan Didion, Howard Zinn, Samantha Power, Tony Kushner, Russell Banks, Sally Potter, Eric Reeves, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Ha Jin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Don DeLillo, Ali Allawi, Ursula K. Le Guin.

Guernica journalists, too, have won acclaim in their fields and have been invited to discuss their Guernica pieces on NPR affiliates around the country, and their equivalents overseas. When Mark Dowie published his piece on fortress conservation in India in April 2008 ("Eviction Slip"), a conservationist wrote that Dowie's essay was being debated in the halls of India's government.

Not to mention the halls of US government: After a Guernica interview ran with Mia Farrow on the crisis in Darfur, Congressional staffers called our editors to request assistance putting together a Darfur event.



Awards

And awards as well: In July 2008, Okey Ndibe's "My Biafran Eyes" (August 2007) won an inaugural Best of the Web prize by indie pub powerhouse Dzanc books.

And Guernica poetry (namely, Rebecca Morgan Frank's "Rescue") was recently chosen for the Best New Poets award (2008).


Events

But Guernica is not just out there in the ether... or ethernet, as it were. Guernica live programming has synched up with Amnesty International, the United Nations, Fordham University, the Austrian Cultural Forum, and in 2008 Guernica's Crisis Darfur was the opening event of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, filling the auditorium at the Alliance Française’s Flourence Gould Hall in New York City. All of Guernica's ticketed events have sold (or "reserved") out. And our plans to print the publication are moving full steam ahead.

Not bad for a magazine launched online to a few dozen readers from a closet in Fordham University's English Department.

Read more about Guernica in our press section below. And to help support us, keep reading, tell a friend about us, sign up for our newsletter, or make a donation here:

For submissions, or to contact the editors, go here. To meet our staff, go here.

Press

4/08: Guernica’s Crisis Darfur debut event at PEN is written up (twice) in NEW YORK MAGAZINE:


4/30/08: Bernard-Henri Lévy, Mia Farrow, and Some New Age Music Open the PEN World Voices Fest
At last night’s lecture at the French Institute Alliance Française (complete with both Perrier and Evian bottles for the guests), their methods of publicizing the crisis were markedly different: He was the head and she was the heart. More>


Guernica Editors Michael Archer and Joel Whitney with Bernard-Henri Lévy, Dinaw Mengestu and Mia Farrow at the Crisis Darfur event at PEN World Voices—a moment of levity before a grave discussion.

4/29/08: Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Lévy Decide to Issue Joint Darfur Demands, Over Lunch
Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Lévy just finished a late lunch at the Carlyle Hotel, where the Darfur activists discussed what they should talk about during their two-hour "Crisis Darfur" panel at the PEN World Voices Festival tonight. More>

[Listen to the whole program here. See the pictures here.]

10/22/07: Guernica Editors Michael Archer and Joel Whitney talk with Publishers Weekly
Guernica: Lit Mag Beats the Odds
Former M.F.A. students Joel Whitney and Michael Archer had no grand plan, much less a business plan, when they started the online-only lit mag Guernica. Compelled by a shared passion for international literature and serious journalism... More>

Guernica Poetry Editor Erica Wright on Cross-Cultural Poetics
10/14/07
Episode #148 Outernationale
Erica Wright, poetry editor for Guernica, discusses the online journal in the climate of a "fear of foreign-ness." With Peter Gizzi. More>

7/12/07: Editor Joel Whitney on Seattle NPR affiliate KUOW, with actor Charles Dumas and musician David Lester (Mecca Normal)
Art & Politics
Art is all about aesthetics. Except when it's not. Some art is also very political. Think Guernica. Think Vaclav Havel. What role do artists play when it comes to social criticism and commentary? More>
[Whitney joins discussion at 14:20]