Joel Whitney Author

Joel Whitney is the author of Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers, which The New Republic called a “powerful warning.” His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, Boston Review, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. He is a former features editor at Al Jazeera America and a founder and former editor-in-chief of Guernica: A Global Magazine of Art & Politics, for which he was awarded the 2017 PEN/Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Editing. His essays in The Baffler, Dissent and Salon were Notables in Best American Essays 2017, 2015 and 2013. 

A graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Joel’s poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, The Nation, and Agni, and was awarded the Discovery Prize from the 92^nd Street Y and The Nation. Joel curates literary programs at Brooklyn Public Library’s BPL Presents. In 2022, he co-edited Lenapehoking, an anthology of historical essays, interviews and poetry, co-published by Ugly Duckling Presse, Lenape Center & Brooklyn Public Library.