The May Issue
May 19, 2025
The Editors
Memory Loss
February 25, 2021
A mini series, co-published with Urban Omnibus, that explores sites of public and private remembrance in New York City.
Deserts: A Guernica Special Issue
May 7, 2018
To make a story from the desert is not unlike the work of the agave. Something must transform.
Female Fighters
December 15, 2016
In partnership with the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative at the City College of New York.
The Future of Cities
June 15, 2016
On cities grimed by human hands—by pollution and greed, by corruption and terrorism, by neglect and artificiality, by colonization and apartheid and war—and places of hope, with humanism as their foundation.
The Future of Language
March 15, 2016
On language as a wellspring of memory and shared knowledge, and a rubric by which we measure difference—between races, between species, between subjectivities.
The Boundaries of Nations
December 15, 2015
On who we are and where we come from, what national and personal identity might mean in this uprooted, transient era when home can be defined by the clothes on your back and the borders you can’t cross.
The Boundaries of Nature
September 15, 2015
On the natural world: wondrous, ineffable, and indifferent to us, adhering to its own laws even as we behold it with awe or fear, even as we seek to understand it through physics and art, even as we impose policies of plunder or protection.
The Boundaries of Taste
June 15, 2015
On that nebulous space between love and what we think we love, primal pleasure and learned appreciation, gut revulsion and reasoned dismissal, and taste as performance and a projection of our selves into the world.
The Boundaries of Gender
March 16, 2015
On constructing and reconstructing sexuality, upending and transgressing the constricting binaries of gender, and the body as the first and most foundational means of relation.
Religion in America: Gods and Devils
December 15, 2014
On the continued tendency in America to define belief by its absence, myriad approaches to spiritual life, and lasting expressions of faith, be it through dogged observance, syncretism, resistance, or renewal.
American Empires: Power and Its Discontents
October 1, 2014
On the vast cultural, economic, and political space of America, where there is the government and also what governs us: family, preachers, landlords, money, or that thing you feel in the absence of money, corporations, even art.
Guernica Goes Analog
July 19, 2014
Join Guernica as we celebrate summer and our forthcoming print edition at the Guernica Summer Benefit.
Class in America: The Fault Lines
June 16, 2014
On yesterday’s legacy, today’s money, and class lines as fault lines—politically fraught and personally subjective, actual and imagined.
The American South: On the Map and in the Mind
March 17, 2014
On the landscape of the South, at turns surprising and familiar, at once a geographical distinction and a bright spot in the imagination, where burden vies with birthright, and where ignorance and renaissance exist side by side.
Freedom of Expression: The Gray Areas
February 3, 2014
On the forces that obstruct expression in an age when writers, activists, and others find themselves visibly, violently, and systematically surveilled and silenced, and where—whether geographically or intellectually, in memory or in cyberspace—we might actually be free. Guernica and Free Word in association with Article 19 and English PEN.
Editors’ Picks: Our Favorite Books from 2013
December 12, 2013
It's not too late to write to Santa for these.
Editors’ Picks: Halloween Reads
October 31, 2013
Spooky reading recommendations from the editors at Guernica on the things that terrify us: from Edith Wharton's ghosts to rotting elevator salmon.
Editors’ Picks: Heat Wave Reads
July 23, 2013
"What grows best in the heat: fantasy, unreason, lust."
Editors’ Picks: Reading About Race
June 14, 2013
Guernica's staff brings you their favorite writing on race, in America and beyond.
Editors’ Picks: Recommended Reading
July 23, 2012
Our editors highlight some worthy books to fill what remains of summer.