Tag: Guernica

T Kira Madden tells the story of her rape, confusion, and redemption to show us what rape culture really looks like in this country.

Beauty criticism analyzes the ways we can subvert a society that would have us subsumed by self-loathing. We use the tools we’ve been given. Makeup, then, can be a weapon. And it can be damn fun.

At Guernica, Lucas Mann (who lost his brother to heroin addiction) writes on why abstinence and methadone don’t work and how doctors are failing in their fight against arbitrary, DEA-enforced patient caps on buprenorphine — a promising treatment for heroin addiction. Curran began prescribing in 2002. He was stunned by the results, and so were […]

Here are five stories about the sociopolitics of stripping down.

She is conservative in her politics and her spirituality, sure, but she’s deeply concerned for the planet’s welfare and sees environmental protection as a Christian imperative.

2015 was rough, and it feels right to start off 2016 on an optimistic, mystical note.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the acclaimed new novel The Small Backs of Children, has a haunting essay up at Guernica about “Laume,” a mythological water spirit and guardian of all children that her Lithuanian grandmother introduced her to when she was young, and about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of violence and […]

That night, the whole village watching, Stavros Stavros finally proved his manhood: on the dance floor. With the pomp of the traditional syrtos that suggested respite before battle, the resting of the soul, he rejected the pappas’s interference, his mother’s control, his father’s weakness. When he felt like showing off, he showed off. During one […]

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

A true connoisseur of the chicken tender knows that there are three immutable rules. The first is the rule of physical integrity. A tender has a proper shape: flattish, oblong, and gradually tapering from a wide front to a narrow end. Unlike nuggets, which are largely made from processed, re-formed scraps, the chicken tender takes […]

The excellent and underfunded nonprofit art and politics magazine Guernica has a special issue this month dedicated to exploring the boundaries of gender. In it, novelist Alexander Chee writes about the surprising realizations he had the first time he dressed in drag for a night on the town with the man he loves: He is really spellbound, though, in a […]

Guernica: Is there ever a situation where you’d advise an author not to take a big advance that’s being offered? Chris Parris-Lamb: No, not really. Which is not the same as saying they should always take the biggest advance that’s being offered. But I’d never advise an author to turn down an advance because it’s […]

Here are five stories born of adultery. Read about technological advancements for philanderers and their cuckolds, personal perspectives from the cheater and the cheatee, a forbidden lust-fueled crime story, and a piece on how adultery became bedfellows with American popular culture and music—back in 1909. 1. “The Cuckold” (James Harms, Guernica, February 17, 2014) “The cuckold […]

Today, I want to honor the stories of women who left religion (the Christian faith, in particular), and these are four thoughtful, poetic meditations.

Here are five pieces on different facets of sleep: a short story about sleepwalking, a dispatch from Gaza, a person who can’t help but sleep when he’s stressed, and more.

The New York City Housing Authority began construction on the North Bronx’s Parkside Houses in 1948. The first tenants—including the family of novelist Richard Price—began moving in during the spring of 1951. In a recent piece for Guernica, Price detailed the rise and fall of public housing in New York, told through the lens of his […]

In the two years since my graduation from my conservative Christian college, approximately half of my friends have reaffirmed their faith: they’ve joined churches, volunteered in youth groups, and read the Bible in its entirety. Other friends have left their faith for something different: agnosticism or atheism. I find myself between the two camps, mostly intrigued by the latter. This is explored in the following four pieces.

My boss when I worked in London—someone who’d published Booker Prize winners, remember—used to say that two-thirds of publishing is about failure. I agree with that: it’s the nature of the business. And yet publishing is an industry that keeps attracting to it, in various ways, people who want it to be two-thirds about success. […]

“When Mary Margaret Vojtko died last September—penniless and virtually homeless and eighty-three years old, having been referred to Adult Protective Services because the effects of living in poverty made it seem to some that she was incapable of caring for herself—it made the news because she was a professor.” So begins the dark tale of […]

Photo: Richard Barnes *** Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.   ***

These four fantastic fiction pieces will take you far away from this perpetual winter. 1. “Lost in Transit.” (Leon, The Swan Children Magazine, March 2014) This story is a beautiful, haunting example of the work produced by the Swan Children, a collective of artists expressing their experiences under “homeschooled, Quiverfull, and conservative Christian upbringing.” The […]

Interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo about the difficulties, rewards—and traps—that come with reporting on the poor:  When I pick a story, I’m very much aware of the larger issues that it’s illuminating. But one of the things that I, as a writer, feel strongly about is that nobody is representative. That’s just narrative […]

[Fiction] Two friends decide to loot houses after a natural disaster strikes: I turned onto the first street, where we entered one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, a pink two story house greeting us in every direction. The houses had fared well, except for their roofs, now without tiles. Every roof looked identical, the neighborhood having […]

[Fiction] A couple returns home from Israel:  It’s six-thirty now and the boys are back in bed; it’s early afternoon Israel time. For the moment, Noelle feels as if she’s in a bubble, lying awake next to Amram while the children are asleep. She presses her ear to the wall to see if her sisters […]

A Palestinian-American writer flies to Israel on her way to visit her sister. Despite having an American passport, she doesn’t make it far: An hour later, the bearded young man who had originally questioned me at the immigration hall became my guard. When I tried to go to the bathroom, he said I was not […]

[Fiction] A sisters’ weekend and an unexpected encounter bring back memories: When Trisha comes to town we have to go out. She’s the bitterest soccer mom of all time and as part of her escape from home she wants to get drunk and complain about her workaholic husband and over-scheduled, ungrateful children. No one appreciates […]