Author: Adrian Matejka

Today’s post is my last for the Ploughshares blog and it just happens to coincide with the beginning of Season Five of Friday Night Lights. Good times all around. Big ups to everyone who read my posts. I know they weren’t always directly related to the craft of writing, but it’s all part of the…

Disclaimer: I tried to avoid anything that would compromise the Friday Night Lights narrative for those who haven’t picked up on it yet. But seriously, if you haven’t watched the show, you should hit up Netflix right away. * In Atlanta last Christmas, I got trapped like Jack Torrance by the first Yuletide snow that…

Originally from Alabama, Jake Adam York is Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado Denver. He is the author of three books of poems—Murder Ballads (Elixir Press, 2005), A Murmuration of Starlings (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), which was a winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry…

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Black Swan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002) which was a winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and ]Open Interval[ (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and for the L.A. Times Book Award. Her work has appeared in many…

Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada. He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman and is a recipient of a…

For Part I, see Here. As both a practicing writer and Co-Director of the River Styx at Duff’s Reading Series, I’ve had the opportunity to step to the mic in multiple capacities. The expectations of a reader and a facilitator of readings are very different, but both have the responsibility of engaging the audience on…

Not too long ago, I caught a bit of the original Clash of the Titans on TV. It has always been one of my favorite movies: Harry Hamlin’s hair cut, the impressive stop-motion animation, and of course, Zeus commanding Poseidon to “release the Kraken.” The sight of the sea monster awkwardly palming those alcove rocks…

This week’s post was originally going to be about literary reading etiquette, complete with some suggestions for how to behave as a reader before, during, and after an event. But Gabrielle Calvocoressi read as part of the River Styx at Duffs Reading Series here in St. Louis the other night and her reading was so…

The day after I played the best game of my middle school basketball career, I read an article explaining the physics of the jump shot. According to the author, there is only a two-ounce difference in pressure between a shot that hits the front of the rim and one that hits the back. There are…