Guernica (magazine)

Guernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is an American online magazine that publishes art, photography, fiction, and poetry, along with nonfiction such as letters, investigative pieces, and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy. It also publishes interviews and profiles of artists, writers, musicians, and political figures.

History
Guernica was founded in 2004 by Joel Whitney, Michael Archer, Josh Jones, and Elizabeth Onusko. Guernica Inc. has been a not-for-profit corporation since 2009. National Book Foundation Director Lisa Lucas was the publisher of Guernica from 2014 until 2016. Madhuri Sastry resigned as co-publisher in March 2024 in response to Guernica publishing an essay by an Israeli about the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Sastry was replaced by Magogodi aoMphela Makhene. Jina Moore served as Editor-in-Chief and co-Publisher until April 2024, when she resigned over the magazine's decision to stand by the retraction of the essay, which she had selected for publication.

Awards and events
In 2008, Okey Ndibe's "My Biafran Eyes" won a Best of the Web prize from Dzanc Books. In 2008, Rebecca Morgan Frank's "Rescue" was chosen for the Best New Poets award.

In 2009, Matthew Derby's short story for Guernica, "January in December", won a Best of the Web prize from Dzanc Books.

In 2009, E. C. Osondu was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing for his Guernica short story, "Waiting".

In 2010, Mark Dowie's "Food Among the Ruins" was chosen for the Best of the Net anthology. In 2010, Oliver de la Paz's poem "Requiem for the Orchard", F. Daniel Rzicnek's poem "Geomancy" and Elizabeth Crane's short story "The Genius Meetings" won Best of the Web prizes from Dzanc Books.

In 2011, Bridget Potter's essay "Lucky Girl" was chosen for The Best American Essays, 2011, guest-edited by Edwidge Danticat. In 2011, Jack Shenker's "Dam Dilemma" was part of a portfolio of his work longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in the UK.

In 2013, Guernica won Utne magazine's Media Award for Best Social/Cultural Coverage.

In 2016, Alexander Chee's essay "Girl" was chosen for The Best American Essays, 2016, edited by Jonathan Franzen.

Guernica won the 2016 AWP Small Press Publisher Award given by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs that "acknowledges the hard work, creativity, and innovation" of small presses and "their contributions to the literary landscape" of the US.

In 2017, Guernica won the PEN American Center Nora Magid Award for Editing.

In 2023, Guernica won a Whiting Award.

Contributors and editors
Contributors include Lorraine Adams, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jesse Ball, A. Igoni Barrett, Amit Chaudhuri, Susan Choi, Noam Chomsky, Billy Collins, Susan Daitch, Marguerite Duras, Stephen Elliott, Rivka Galchen, James Galvin, Amitav Ghosh, Mahvish Khan, Alexandra Kleeman, Eric Kraft, Kiese Laymon, Douglas Light, Sarah Lindsay, Dorthe Nors, Okey Ndibe, Meghan O'Rourke, Zachary Mason, Tracy O'Neill, Daniele Pantano, Matthew Rohrer, Deb Olin Unferth, Sergio Ramírez, Amartya Sen, Aurelie Sheehan, Jonathan Steele, Laren Stover, Terese Svoboda, Mitch Swenson, Olufemi Terry, Anthony Tognazzini, Frederic Tuten, Joe Wenderoth Patrick White, and Yaa Gyasi.

Recent guest fiction and poetry editors have included Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Francisco Goldman, Randa Jarrar, Sam Lipsyte, Ben Marcus, Claire Messud, George Saunders, Tracy K. Smith, and Frederic Tuten.

Interview subjects have included filmmaker John Waters, Congressman John Conyers, Congresswomen Marcy Kaptur and Carolyn B. Maloney, Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, Justice Department legal counsel John Yoo, former member of Dutch Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Iraqi cabinet member Ali Allawi, artist Chuck Close, singers Lila Downs and David Byrne, and authors Etgar Keret, Andrew Bacevich, Don DeLillo, Howard Zinn, Samantha Power, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Nicholas D. Kristof, Joan Didion, playwright Tony Kushner, and actor Mia Farrow.

Senior editors include Adam Dalva (senior editor, fiction), Kamelya Omaya Youssef (senior editor, poetry), and Eryn Loeb (deputy editor). Previous longtime senior editors include Meakin Armstrong (senior editor, fiction 2006-2022) and Erica Wright (Senior editor, Poetry 2007-2022)

2024 controversy over Israeli essay
In March 2024, during the Israel–Hamas war, at least 10 editors of Guernica resigned over its publication of an essay, titled "From the Edges of a Broken World", by Israeli writer, translator and peace activist Joanna Chen, which the magazine later retracted with the promise of a "more fulsome explanation" to come. As summarized by The New York Times, the author "had written about her experiences trying to bridge the divide with Palestinians, including by volunteering to drive Palestinian children from the West Bank to receive care at Israeli hospitals, and how her efforts to find common ground faltered after Hamas's Oct. 7 attack and Israel's subsequent attacks on Gaza".

Guernica co-publisher Madhuri Sastry, who was among those who quit over the affair, criticized the essay as "a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine", and former fiction editor Ishita Marwah called the magazine "a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness". On the other hand, journalist and Guernica contributor Emily Fox Kaplan argued that the problem "is that [the essay] presents an Israeli as human. The people who are losing their minds about this want to believe that there are no civilians in Israel. They want a simple good guys/bad guys binary, and this creates cognitive dissonance."

Novelist Phil Klay wrote in The Atlantic that the incident "reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature", and that if a magazine can't deal with reality, "your editors might as well resign, because you've turned your back on literature."

On April 12, more than a month after the initial retraction, co-founder Michael Archer provided an update on the situation. Archer reiterated that he stands behind the magazine's decision to retract the article, as he did not feel it fit the magazine's established values. As a result of the decision, Jina Moore, who had selected the essay for publication, resigned from her post as editor-in-chief and co-publisher. Archer's statement promised more transparency in the magazine's editorial choices going forward. The statement also introduced Guernica's new publisher, Magogodi aoMphela Makhene.