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This week after reading “The Operating System” by Carol LaHines, I tried to think of the last time I made a big mistake—or thought I did—and was forced to wait out the consequences. Our minds do strange work when we need an answer and aren’t allowed to have it. Our desire to know is so…
It’s the time of year when I always seem to find myself saying: we’ve got big things in store. Last year it was our announcement that the Ploughshares blog was “becoming its own, separate creature.” This year, if you’ll permit a slightly hokey extension of that metaphor, that creature is shedding its first skin. Contrary to…
It’s so cold in Chicago that the temperature isn’t even negative; it has one of those calculus sigmas in front of it, and there’s some kind of logarithm involved. Maybe you’re sitting in the sun on your California balcony, you ingrate, but here in the Midwest there’s little to do but read and drink… So…
Rosalind Russell owes me a semester of my life. Specifically, the spring of my sophomore year in college when I spent a misguided few months taking Reporting. At the time, I told people it was because I wanted to emulate Frank Rich during his theater critic years. The truth, however, was that I had been…
I wasn’t expecting my friend D to smash the green anole with a rock. But he did, and the lizard’s insides smeared red against the concrete driveway. Its eyes, black and bleeding, sunk into its tiny skull. We were nine. I’d caught the green anole in the tree down the street. We caught brown ones…
I like to be alone when I write. When I’m deep into a project, I don’t answer the phone, I don’t respond to emails, and on the most intense days, I don’t even venture outside. Part of what appeals to me about the writer’s life is this partnership with solitude. I crave the intense focus…
There’s something I like about that “Most Interesting Man in the World” ad campaign for Dos Equis. Firstly, I like it for the shot where we see the man saving a fox from a fox hunt, a mob of hounds and people on his trail while he carries the would-be victim to safety. I have…
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 Whitney Trettien, Ph.D. candidate…
The ‘Writers and Their Pets’ series began with my own desire to celebrate my dog Sally, and since then I have also invited other writers to share with the rest of us the details of their lives with beloved pets. Today, please enjoy this essay by Carolyn Creedon. —Ladette Randolph, Editor-in-Chief I was raised in a chaotic household…
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