[1] The journal began publishing major movements of post-War 20th century European writing, Karel Čapek, László Krasnahorkai, Ivan Klíma; Arabic writing, Mahmoud Darwish, Vénus Khoury-Gata, Hanan Al-Shayk; Spanish magical realism, Laura Esquivel, Luisa Valenzuela; contemporary graphics from Poland, the U.S., South Africa, Australia.

Gobshite has featured contemporary writing and graphics from established writers of the Pacific Northwest: Doug Spangle, Walt Curtis, Katherine Dunn, Tom Spanbauer, Lidia Yuknavitch, David Biespiel, Ursula K. Le Guin, Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Melo, and Shannon Wheeler.

Gobshite Quarterly focuses on multilingual writing and features poems and stories translated into or originally written in Spanish, Arabic, Icelandic, Persian, Albanian, Finnish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Lithuanian, Gaelic, Japanese, Korean, Bangla, English,[3] and many others.

R. V. Branham, who grew up in the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic city of Calexico, California, wanted to include formally unacceptable speech in a literary journal.

In 1993, prior to founding Gobshite, Branham served as Urban Jungle Editor for the Portland-based culture and arts periodical, Paperback Jukebox.

With the collapse of magazine distribution from 2006 through 2008, and closure of bookstore chains Tower Books and Borders, Gobshite Quarterly transitioned to the internet for a few years.

Since 2013, Gobshite Quarterly has published two double issues per year, globally distributed through Ingram Spark in a 9”x6”, print on demand, perfect bound, flip-book format.

In December of 2003, Gobshite Quarterly was awarded a Literary Arts Publisher’s Fellowship,[8] and a small grant from the Oregon chapter of the National Writers Union soon after.

[10] In 2016, Gobshite Quarterly received travel grants from the Lithuanian and Croatian Ministries of Culture[11] In November 2016, McAuliffe’s poem “Crucifix 1” appeared in the Yoko Ono installation “Arising” at the Reykjavik Art Museum.