Author: Weston Cutter

I want to preface this whole thing by saying that I’m not writing this because of the Rankine/Hoagland debate that sprung up in/around/after AWP. I’m happy that conversation is in existence, and I’m glad people are debating notions of voice, ownership, and race, but that’s not necessarily where this started. I should also mention that I was thinking about this stuff before I…

Here’s my proposal: I think all of us who write and submit creative work for publication should, for every ten submissions we send out, review at least one book for publication somewhere—Bookslut, Rain Taxi, the Rumpus, wherever. There should be some cut-off point—let’s say after you’ve got at least two books of your own, your…

If you have, at any point this year, had a conversation about the number of women in publishing–the number of female-authored books reviewed in newspapers, say–you’ve had that conversation (likely) because of some numbers which were researched and published by VIDA, an organization devoted to women in literary arts. The author of two shockingly, lastingly…

  If you have, at any point this year, had a conversation about the number of women in publishing–the number of female-authored books reviewed in newspapers, say–you’ve had that conversation (likely) because of some numbers which were researched and published by VIDA, an organization devoted to women in literary arts. The author of two shockingly,…

I have become, maybe unfortunately, obsessed with structure. I don’t imagine I’m alone in considering this aspect of poetry: all of us who write have, at some point, had to decide where the line breaks, how we’ll let the clusters of language cohere. I don’t have a goal in mind, in terms of writing about…

I have, for at least the past year, been mildly to massively frustrated by the rise of the word “random” as it’s presently used. This is dull in all sorts of ways—every writer’s got his/her words which frustrate, to say nothing of the nebbishness of even bothering to be pissed at some utterance—but I haven’t…

I have, for at least the past year, been mildly to massively frustrated by the rise of the word “random” as it’s presently used. This is dull in all sorts of ways—every writer’s got his/her words which frustrate, to say nothing of the nebbishness of even bothering to be pissed at some utterance—but I haven’t…

I don’t know how much needs to be said or written about Olena Kalytiak Davis: won the 1997 Brittingham Prize, lives in Alaska, post-confessional (blah blah blah), shattered sonnets from Tin House, Best American Poetry selection of “Six Apologies Lord,” etc. She also has some of the best music taste of anyone alive and is…

I’m not sure the Ploughshares blog is the perfect venue to feature an interview with the editor of another literary journal, but I’m 100% sure that those who read Ploughshares 1) probably know about other literary journals, and therefore could (and I’d argue should) be interested in them, and 2) read good writing, and could…