About Issue #2: The People’s Magazine
by The Editors of The Gotham Guillotine
We have no idea how we managed to promote our first issue , read the dozens of submissions for this issue, copyedit the accepted pieces, and present them to you here in four months. And to think we have to do it all over again starting today!
We’d like to thank the following people and publications for their kind words and encouragement during our first months of existence: Nathan J. Robinson and the Current Affairs team, China Miéville, Sue Powell, After Dinner Conversation, Anarchist-Socialist Party Of Poets, Bourbon Penn, The Bowery Review, Dread, The Drift, The Eunoia Review, Five on the Fifth, Iskra Books, M E N A C E, r/lefturbanism, The /tƐmz/ Review, tongue .etc, and the countless magazines and writers who followed our social media accounts. You all made this pipe dream feel real. Thank you!
Issue #2: The People’s Magazine brings together the art, prose, and verse of fifteen amazing creatives ranging from best-selling authors to high school teachers to octogenarian labor organizers. We’re very proud to be the first (but not last) publication credit for a handful of our writers.
First up is W.H. Hackel’s “Vultures from the City Hell”: a heart-stopper of a story following an eviction crew as they remind us why property is theft.
Next, our poet in residence, Kathryn R. Rieber has bestowed upon us a dada polemical poem “fractured legs America.” (You should also check our her poem in Issue #1: Comrades.)
Following her, we have Rick Moody with his equal parts hilarious and moving prose play “When We Were Young.” The Conways had it coming.
And after that, the singer-songwriter Reins has given us some verses that’ll break your heart and fill the cracks with red hot rage and the blackest sorrow: “A Handshake.”
“Giant Baby” by Ioana Barbulescu is our next story and is about a manifestation that actually works! Well, the miracle comes butt-first, but it worked, didn’t it?
Lenin’s What is to be Done? is one of the foundational texts for The Gotham Guillotine, but have you read the revolutionary novel that inspired its title? Well, lucky for you, dear reader, you can read an awesome essay by T.S. Carney about it: Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? — The Good “Message Novel”
Following that, we have a poem by KT Kerrigan that’s perfect for this summer of discontent: “american beach vacation (dispatch from San Juan).” Make sure to pack an umbrella to shade you from the falling bombs!
There has never been a funnier and more poignant story about con men and immigration than S. Mubashir Noor’s “Through Proper Channels.”
The Gotham Guillotine’s first book review comes from Arthur Delot-Vilain with his essay about Neil Gray’s Take Over The City: Spatial Composition in Italian Autonomy.
Then we have Andy Qifeng Zeng’s satirical short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Money” about the curséd rich trying to find their souls à la The Symposium.
Garen Torikian gives a crisp guide on “How to Stay Well in Wartime” that’ll make you laugh and cry in equal measures.
Derek Swart schools us with his visceral poem “How I Would Teach High School Economics.”
Who knew that socialist literary critics could be such snobs? Well, Hugh Blanton did, as he expounds in his essay “King of the Snobs: On Dwight Macdonald and Mass Culture.”
History is jam-packed with assholes turning into martyrs. Ben Nardolilli lays it out for us in his poem “Holy, Holy is the Lord of Edges.”
David Berger is the closer for this set list, with his eerie satire on reality TV and the media industry: “VERUM PRODUCTIONS: THE FINEST IN FAMILY REALITY MILITARY SPECTACLES.”
We’d like to thank the artists who contributed amazing images for this issue: Adelaide Steinfeld, Kathryn R. Rieber, Rick Moody, Natasha Zinos, Andra Manea, KT Kerrigan, Line Lizard, and Mario Loprete.
We’d also like to thank the bands Cellophane Kiss, George & The Lords, LOST DOG for allowing us to shoutout their amazing forthcoming music. Play their tracks fucking LOUD!
Okay, more thank yous. We’d like to thank Ameer Malik and our slush pile readers who wish to remain anonymous. You made this process so much easier than it could’ve been. You can read Ameer’s story from Issue #1 here and our interview with him here.
Finally, thank you, comrades, for reading and sharing our second issue. Our editors and writers raise a fist in your honor.
We hope you’re all ready for Issue #3: Gothic Marxism coming October 2026! Our third issue will be featuring work from Gretchen Felker-Martin, Jon Greenaway, Alison Rumfitt, and an interview with China Miéville. Submission guidelines are here!
Power to the people!
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