A Note from the Blog Book Reviews Editor

It’s been almost six months now since we started reviewing books here on the Ploughshares blog, and having wobbled down the path this long we’re finally feeling ready to throw off our training wheels.

That means over the next six months you can expect to see some changes in the reviews we publish. For a start we’ll be relying on a more regular set of contributors, picked from our favorite and most popular reviewers so far, with the hope that in the same way you might currently turn to the Globe to read Ty Burr on films or the Times to read Jon Pareles on pop music, you’ll soon be able to turn to Ploughshares for, say, Anca Szilagyi on the latest literary fiction or P. Scott Stanfield on recent poetry. (We’ll still be considering unsolicited submissions, too, so keep on sending them in!)

We’ll also be taking a more hands-on approach to filling the editorial schedule with themed weekly “issues”—like last week’s on music in fiction or next week’s on books tied to a certain place—and also working with our reviewers to write more than “just” book reviews; in the coming months you can expect more creative, personalized columns, and changes in format rolling out across all our reviews. Indeed, if there are any features you wish our reviews included, feel free to comment on this post or send an email to pshares.reviews@gmail.com.

And finally, you can look forward to more missives like this from me, your mild-mannered book reviews editor. In addition to editing and sometimes writing reviews myself, as I’ve been doing already, I’ll be putting together the occasional editorial comment, or glimpse at what goes on behind the scenes, or round-up of what’s been getting attention on the blog.

So thanks for riding with us this far—and we hope you’ll keep it up as we barrel ever onwards.