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In his introduction to the most recent issue of Ploughshares, guest editor Peter Ho Davies says that the thrill he found in each selected story was the sense that it spoke to him alone.  But how do you make that happen? We’ve talked about a lot of different strategies to make your stories rise to the top…

I’ve written before about the feeling you get when a story follows you. When you’ve put the book or journal down or you’ve turned off your computer and gotten up and gone back to the rest of your life. But then you catch yourself, in idle moments, thinking of those characters or the plot or…

It’s summer! Time to get out those binoculars and spot some writers. If you are unable to find writers, a simple whiskey trail should suffice to lure them to your backyard. Be on the lookout for these newly identified species. Laureatos bolanos The dead foreign writer who wrote eight 6,000-page recently translated novels that everyone…

The first time I met Rick Bass, in early 2010, I was sick as a dog. Iowa State University had invited him to participate in its annual Wildness Symposium, during my first year in the MFA program. In the middle of the symposium my Florida-born body rejected winter altogether. I discovered what a full-blown Iowan…

Okay, yes. I said “science.” (I’m about to judge me, too.) But as luck would have it, I submitted this blog just as Steven Pinker‘s “Science Is Not the Enemy of Humanities” was about to go viral. Pinker and I will high-five about our uncanny timing later, but meanwhile—let’s buy in. Because seriously, this is…

I thought it had been about three years since I sent my first novel out to agents.  Turns out it was six.  Like the rest of the world, publishing has changed since 2007. A lot. Fewer publishing houses, less money, more e-books, more blogs, more noise to cut through. My first agent, and first book,…

Remember the climactic scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”? The Nazis are about to open the ark and they have Indy and Marion tied up to that big post and as the ark starts to glow Indy says, “Marion, don’t look at it! Shut your eyes, Marion! Don’t look at it no matter what…

My fellow Ploughshares blogger Caitlin O’Neil recently wrote an awesome post about all the important writing lessons she learned from reading children’s books. I was like, “OMG so true! I too have learned so many important writing lessons from reading children’s books!” And then I told all my friends about it. And they were like, “OMG…