Guernica Magazine

Getting lost while picking mushrooms in Lithuania is so common that it has its own word. The word also applies to stories that diverge into tangents, like the author’s father’s about the Vietnam War.

“I’m in a haunted place, in my home and in my body.”

“For a school of drag to have liberated itself from binary rigidity is no small thing. The variety and fluidity here hint at larger trends within the art form, and have implications that reverberate beyond the drag world, too.”

The only thing better than an interview with writer, scholar, and Twitter luminary Tressie McMillan Cottom is an interview with McMillan Cottom where the interviewer is Roxane Gay.

As she recalls a trip to Peru, the body of a mummified girl sacrificed for the safety of the Incans over 500 years ago, and the frustrating neurological condition that steals her memory and strength, Jacqueline Alnes mines the topography of female identity and the stereotypes that erode our self image.

“When I choose, anoint, and burn a candle with my prayers scratched into the wax, when I make my prayers material, I convince myself that I can grab onto a power that will carry me through this life.”

With roots in apartheid-era conflict, waves of violence among municipal officials in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’s second largest province, threaten the nation’s democracy.

Denied parole, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence challenged Rhode Island’s state parole laws, claiming they should have considered his age as a mitigating factor, and that he should now be offered parole. His case raises many questions: Shouldn’t the people convicted as children be offered parole as conscientious adults? Is it really fair to charge juvenile offenders as adults? Here’s a portrait of what rehabilitation looks like.

Here’s what happens when non-citizen immigrants commit a crime in America. It doesn’t involve the opportunity for a second chance.

Amy Wright interviews novelist, activist, and feminist Dorothy Allison on class, how poverty can influence a life’s path, the definition of a working-class heroine, and the role of women writers in literature.