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    In honor of Valentine’s Day later this week, and my first post in a series of writing prompts, I present to you this ever so schmaltzy “Cupid in a Wine Glass.” (More on that in a minute.) Between drafting my first novel and teaching creative writing to undergraduates and adults, I’ve been happily…

It’s 1979 and the Mad Men-esque execs were in a cab, on the way to present a corporate identity theme to the bigwigs at GE. The current version was pretty clunky and they knew it: We make the things that make life good.” Their agency teams had spent weeks researching, brainstorming, even songwriting. Ad man…

I was 21 years old when I first read José Emilio Pacheco, one of Mexico’s premier literary writers, who died earlier this month. I found him by being nosy, browsing through my friend’s bookshelves while he was having sex with his girlfriend in her father’s Land Rover, somewhere out on top of a hill. She…

Pioneer Girl Bich Minh Nguyen Viking Adult, February 2014 $26.95 304 pages Genre: literary mystery With reference to: Little House on the Prairie And: immigrant lit & ethnic lit And: restlessness vs. belonging Also: Manifest Destiny & Utopia Concerning: Lee Lien, jobless English PhD And: a (possibly) very well-travelled gold pin Surface questions: Is the…

A few months ago, I met a self-publishing millionaire. In just eighteen months, she had gone from an underpaid office worker with a laid-off husband to a beloved romantic erotica writer pulling in $50,000 a month.  She was willing to entertain offers from a big publisher, though none were likely to pay her enough to…

After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance, I turned to published novelists, whose interviews are presented in the One Year In: Writing the Novel series.  Today’s novelist is fellow Ploughshares blogger…

Under review: Ball Four: Twentieth Anniversary Edition by Jim Bouton (465 pages, 1990, Wiley Publishing) A memoir’s publication date usually serves as a finish line. The events within have already taken place well, well in the past; their cathartic release tends to act as a formal and organized end to the events’ influence on the author’s…

Dear Sally, Do you really want to hear from me? My mind and sometimes my writing is a flurry of unrelated thoughts and concerns.  Navel gazing is so overrated, but regardless I wonder what am I to do about my ex-husband who still leaves the seat up every time he comes to my house. Or…

In Issue 34 of Passages North, Karin C. Davidson introduces us to Tulsa, in her story “We Are Here Because of a Horse,” by writing that “Tulsa by night shines like a shattered gold watch.” I’ve arrived in Tulsa much the way her narrator and his wife approach the city here—late at night after traveling all…