I had been writing fiction for fifteen years and publishing stories in literary journals for ten when Supriya Bhatnagar, the publications director at AWP, called me on a mid-May day in 2009. Listening to her brief message an hour later, I wondered if some pages were missing from the manuscript I had submitted for the…
Ellen, Rosanne, Whoopi, Tina. They’re women, they tell jokes, and we’re on a first-name basis. These comedians have imposing brains but often focus on their thighs: they write frequently about their relationship with food, this being one theme that connects them. On the popular NBC sitcom 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s character Liz Lemon is known…
In “Dr. Deneau’s Punishment,” one of eleven excellent short stories in Lori Ostlund’s Flannery O’Connor award-winning collection The Bigness of the World, the title character despairs over the current trend in American schools to reward students for their mediocrity. Under the new regime of the militantly optimistic, the red pen is suspect, likewise the honest…
This week we welcome three new Get Behind the Plough bloggers to Ploughshares. The first is fiction writer Christine Sneed, whose story “The Prettiest Girls” appears in our Winter 2010-11 issue edited by Terrance Hayes. Christine will post on Mondays through April. Guest post by Christine Sneed The harsh truth is this: Sometimes it’s time…
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