Guernica is [insert sincere, not cliché emotion here] to announce that Adam Day, whose poem “The Gods Describe Building Bodies, like Badger’s” first appeared among our pages in 2008, has been awarded the first ever PEN Emerging Writers Award for poetry. The prize recognizes those writers who have been published in distinguished literary journals, but who have not yet published a book. Guernica fiction writer Elliott Holt was a runner-up in the fiction category (whose story “The Norwegians” we featured in 2010). Are we humbled? Sure. Are we surprised? Not really.

Additionally, we’d like to congratulate biographer Stacy Schiff, winner for best biography for Cleopatra: A Life, which we interviewed her about earlier this year, and Ishion Hutchinson, who won best poetry for Far District: Poems, and whose “Thunder in April” we featured last month. Khaled Mattawa won an award for best poetry in translation for his work on Syrian poet Adonis’s Selected Poems. Two of these poems appeared in Guernica in 2010. David MacLean, whose fiction we published in 2007, received an award for a nonfiction piece that appeared in Ploughshares. The champagne starts early today.

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Adam Day: The Gods Describe Building Bodies, like Badger’s: We pour the eyes in with a ladle / like post-holes half-filled / with mud-water, tap them in / with it if we have to. More		Elliott Holt: The Norwegians: The Norwegians were coming to dinner. More
Capturing the Queen: The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff discusses her latest book on Cleopatra that looks beyond tired mythologies surrounding the powerful queen. More		Ishion Hutchinson: Thunder in April: suddenly, strangely peopled, like Robin / in sheaves of rain, the land blurs April / into a fiction that never ends More

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