Guernica is an award-winning online magazine of ideas, art, poetry, and fiction published twice monthly. Guernica Daily, the magazine’s blog, is updated every weekday. We are a 501(c)3 organization and donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
“To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.”
—Claire Messud
Guernica is a “great online literary magazine” —Esquire.
Guernica contributors come from dozens of countries and write in nearly as many languages. They include acclaimed writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bei Dao, J. Malcolm Garcia, Mark Dowie, Lis Harris, Jonathan Steele, George Szirtes, Adonis, Victoria Redel, Norman Solomon, Richard Howard, Julian Rios, Edith Grossman, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Tom Engelhardt, Tariq Ali, Susie Linfield, Pierra Bayard, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Alimorad Fadie Nia, Marie Monique Robin and Shelley Jackson, as well as brilliant younger writers like Rivka Galchen, Deb Olin Unferth, Porochista Khakpour, Mark Binelli, Josh Weil, Jesse Ball, Sadanand Dhume, Monica Ferrell and Laura van den Berg. Guernica guest fiction editors include Claire Messud, Brenda Wineapple, Sam Lipsyte, George Saunders, Francisco Goldman, and Ben Marcus.
“Guernica, and its editors, respect the life of the mind with an intensity rarely seen these days.” —George Saunders
But Guernica has launched brand new voices too. After the magazine published her first poem, poet Sandy Tseng won the “Discovery” Prize, awarded by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation magazine. E.C. Osondu’s story, “Waiting,” won the Caine Prize in July 2009 (see below).
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 Guernica interviews: Arundhati Roy, Joan Didion, John Updike, Judith Butler, Tariq Ali, Samantha Power, Tony Kushner, Don DeLillo, W.S. Merwin, Reza Aslan, Edwidge Danticat, Mia Farrow, Chuck Close, Alice Walker, Elizabeth Warren, Junot Diaz, Ha Jin, Russell Banks, Sally Potter, Ali Allawi, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Ashbery, Robert Hass, Howard Zinn, Fatima Bhutto, and Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Awards
5/2011: Bridget Potter’s essay “Lucky Girl” (March 2010) was selected by Edwidge Danticat for inclusion in Best American Essays 2011.
3/2011: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s story “Quality Street” (February 2010) was selected for Best of the Net 2010.
3/2011: Mark Dowie’s piece “Food Among the Ruins,” (August 2009) was selected for Best of the Net 2010.
3/2011: Jack Shenker, author of “Dam Dilemma” (September 2010) was longlisted for the 2011 Orwell Prize in journalism. The Orwell Prize is Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing.
1/2011: Ned Stuckey-French’s Guernica essay, “Good Fences,” was cited by Best American Essays as a Notable Essay of 2010. The 2010 edition was edited by Christopher Hitchens. The series editor is Robert Atwan.
7/2009: E.C. Osondu wins the Caine Prize (aka The ‘African Booker’) for his Guernica story, “Waiting.”
5/2009: Matthew Derby’s short story “January in December” won a Dzanc Books Best of the Web 2009 award.
7/2008: Okey Ndibe’s essay “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 chosen for the Best New Poets award (2008). The Best New Poets 2008: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers is available here.
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. To subscribe to our free newsletter, go here.
Press
1/2011: Contributor John Patrick Leary discusses his Guernica essay “Detroitism” on WDET’s Craig Fahle Show. Listen>.
11/05/09: Roberto Bolaño was no literary rebel
The myths surrounding the late Chilean author are false, says Bolaño’s friend and fellow novelist, Horacio Castellanos Moya, in Guernica… More>
8/14/09: Regarding his “Food Among the Ruins,”, author Mark Dowie tells Detroit Today radio how Detroit could become the world’s first food-self-sufficient city, and adds: “This story went viral faster than any story I’ve ever done.”
7/07/09: Nigerian Scoops African ‘Booker’
The award was given for his story “Waiting,” about displaced people. It has been published in Guernicamag.com, and takes a $16,000 prize (¤10,000). More>
7/07/09: Caine prize for African writing goes to “Waiting,” a harrowing story of a child’s life in a refugee camp
A spare, poignant story about a child waiting to be rescued from a refugee camp has won the ¤10,000 Caine prize for African writing. Published in October 2008 in Guernica… More>
5/04/09: A Writer’s Violent End, and His Activist Legacy
PEN, an international association of writers dedicated to defending free expression, along with Guernica, the online literary magazine, sponsored the panel with Mr. Patterson, Mr. Ndibe and Ken Wiwa, Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s son, to discuss Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s literary and political legacy. More>
1/22/09: Great Online Literary Magazines
Online literary magazines have long been the sad step-sister of print. But in case you haven’t heard, print’s dying. Instead of wringing your hands over the future of publishing, you could accept that it’s arrived, and that it’s called the Internet. More>
11/28/08: Guernica editor Joel Whitney discusses the magazine’s coverage of the presidential election.
Inside Government
“We’ve tried to find ways to poke holes in what seemed to be a lot of repetition of some silly ideas, such as John McCain talking about how terrifically the surge worked, or the news media talking about Obama’s Reverend Wright problem.”
4/30/08: Guernica nonfiction is hailed by Salon.com
“In that opening paragraph, with its extraordinarily evocative image of an Indian girl whose nose ring signifies a very special kind of outsider status, you can find grist for a thousand dissertations on postmodern identity and culture. But Akshay Ahuja’s “Death Metal and the Indian Identity,” published in the April issue of Guernica, never succumbs to the fatal flaw of over-analysis. It is simply closely observed, thoughtful and exquisitely written. More>
4/2008: 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>
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>
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.
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]
Events
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 Florence Gould Hall in New York City.
