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The Ploughshares Round-Down: Waiting on a Job? Grad School? Publisher? Wait Better.

The Ploughshares Round-Down: Waiting on a Job? Grad School? Publisher? Wait Better.

Okay Writers. Confession: my last couple months disappeared in helpless Waiting: to hear from an interested publisher, to hear about grant funds, to get word on research, jobs, schools, where the hell I’ll be living in six months… It’s excruciating. And I’m not alone. Thousands of you are sending out resumes, submitting manuscripts, obsessively checking gradcafe.com, hearing…

People of the Book: Mara Mills

People of the Book: Mara Mills

People of the Book is an interview series gathering those engaged with books, broadly defined. As participants answer the same set of questions, their varied responses chart an informal ethnography of the book, highlighting its rich history as a mutable medium and anticipating its potential future. This week brings the conversation to Mara Mills, a professor…

Create Your Own Mythology: On Usain Bolt’s 9.58

Create Your Own Mythology: On Usain Bolt’s 9.58

As the Sochi Winter Olympic Games lurch to a close, it’s instructional to remember that, for Summer Olympians, the past two weeks were exactly like every other two weeks in an uninterrupted four years of solitary, quasi-monastic training, in anticipation of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. The nature of their work is as…

The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Creative Writing Instructor Evaluation Form” by April Wilder

The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Creative Writing Instructor Evaluation Form” by April Wilder

Last week I came into the office where I work, sat down, ate an enormous bagel, and laughed so hard that the guy sitting behind me wheeled his chair over to my desk and said, “What’s so funny?” I pointed at my screen where April Wilder’s story “Creative Writing Instructor Evaluation Form” was up on…

Novelists, You’re Doing It Right

Novelists, You’re Doing It Right

  You’re trying to write a novel. Sometimes, it’s exhilarating: characters wake you in the night, yammering, springing into action. Sometimes, it’s excruciating: you stare into blankness, and finally, when the words arrive, they reek of your incompetence. It’s taking forever, this novel of yours. It’s ugly. It’s full of holes. Is this normal? Writing…

Book Recommendations for Those Looking to Transform Their Lives

Book Recommendations for Those Looking to Transform Their Lives

It’s late February, the time by which most New Year’s resolutions slowly fizzle out and die—assuming they didn’t already crash and burn weeks ago. What!? Me, cynical? Heck no! In fact, I used to be so addicted to the idea of self-transformation that I actually ran a blog called Self Help Me, on which I…