The PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing, established in 1993, honors a magazine editor whose high literary standards and taste have, throughout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication he or she edits. Candidates for this biennial award include current editors-in-chief, literary editors, and “back-of-the-book” editors of serious general interest magazines, book reviews, or literary reviews and quarterlies, whose intellectual discernment and wide range of interests recall the late PEN America Member Nora Magid. The winning nominee will receive an award of $2,500.
MICHAEL ARCHER & JOEL WHITNEY, GUERNICA, 2017 Winners
Judges: Michael Dumanis, Caitlin McKenna, David L. Ulin
From the judges’ citation: “Thirteen years ago, Joel Whitney and Michael Archer co-founded Guernica, a start-up enterprise that recognized the inherent interconnectedness of literature and politics, dedicating itself to bringing the best contemporary world fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and the most vital essays on American and global politics, together in an online space. The magazine emerged in part as a response to the policies of then-President George W. Bush, and had, from its inception, an outward-looking international perspective, a humanitarian ethos, and a commitment to social justice, as well as a discerning yet broad aesthetic sensibility. Now reaching over 1.4 million individual readers, with 3.75 million page views this past year, Guernica publishes work that is serious, ambitious, diverse, engaging, and literary. As one of the most distinctive and consistent online publications today, this is a magazine of the highest quality.?
History
(This award is offered every other year, in odd-numbered years.)
1993 Peter Stitt, Gettysburg Review
1995 Herbert Leibowitz, Parnassus
1997 Wendy Lesser, The Threepenny Review
1999 Stan Lindberg, Georgia Review
2001 Askold Melnyczuk, AGNI
2003 Robert Fogarty, Antioch Review
2005 Willard Spiegelman, Southwest Review
2007 Bradford Morrow, Conjunctions
2009 Hannah Tinti, One Story
2011 Brigid Hughes, A Public Space
2013 Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones
2015 Rob Spillman, Tin House
2017 Michael Archer & Joel Whitney, Guernica
Selection Process
Candidates can only be nominated by a Professional Member of PEN America who is in good standing and whose admiration of the candidate’s work prompts him or her to articulate, in some detail, the ways in which the editor has made a personal mark upon the literary quality of the publication. All nominations may be supplemented by nominations from the judges themselves.