Author: Diana Filar

Cover art of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers Patrick DeWitt Ecco, April 2011 336 pages $24.99 This post was written by Lisa Peet. If the Western exists to glorify the outsider, then it should be noted that Eli Sisters, narrator of Patrick DeWitt’s terrific The Sisters Brothers, is an outsider several times over. He and his brother Charlie are already…

Cover art for Radial Symmetry by Katherine Larson

Radial Symmetry

Radial Symmetry Katherine Larson Yale University Press, March 2011. 96 pages $18.00 This post was written by Tory Adkisson. In her recent collection of poems, Radial Symmetry, Yale Younger Series-winner Katherine Larson examines our culture’s increasingly stark division between scientist and artist, and ultimately makes a strong case for reassessing it. A research scientist herself, Larson…

Cover art of William Lychack's The Architect of Flowers

The Architect of Flowers

The Architect of Flowers William Lychack Mariner Books, March 2011 176 Pages $14.00 This book review was written by Walt McGough. “Still with us?” asks the narrator of “Stolpestad,” the first story in William Lychack’s collection The Architect of Flowers. That the question comes only two paragraphs into the book is instructive: Lychack has crafted a…

Photograph of the inside of a bookstore

Editor in Chief, Ladette Randolph, reads at Newtonville Books

We would like to congratulate our editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, on the release of her novel, A Sandhills Ballad, in paperback.  To celebrate, Ladette will read from the novel on April 13th at 7 pm at Newtonville Books in Newton, MA.  She will read along with Monica McInerny, author of At Home with the Templetons. For more…

Image of Ploughshares Colm Toibin issue

Interview with Valerie Brennan, cover artist for the Colm Toibin Issue

Valerie Brennan is the artist whose painting appears on the cover of our Spring 2011 issue, guest edited by Colm Toibin.  I (the web/marketing editor here at Ploughshares) asked her a few questions about this particular painting, current inspirations, and her work in general. Ploughshares: First off, is there an answer to the question “What…

An image of multiple wire lightbulbs in the dark.

Ed Skoog on his poems “Lighting” and “Get Free”

Ed Skoog’s poems, “Lighting” and “Get Free” appear in the Winter 2010-11 issue, of Ploughshares edited by Terrance Hayes. “Lighting” opens with these lines: Note the surface that surrounds the word, and how unlike its meaning, which you step over to avoid, the word raised and untouchable. Pitted prune, eaten bone, hay in a muddy…