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The ‘Writers and Their Pets’ series began with my own desire to celebrate my dog Sally, and over the coming months I will also invite other writers to share with the rest of us the details of their lives with beloved pets. —Ladette Randolph, Editor-in-Chief Blu was born on July 3, 2006, and he is a good boy….

We enter the final genre round of the Ploughshares Fantasy Blog Draft with the oldest of the genres, the most inscrutable, the one with the most wild things and the tallest hats. The genre where the sidewalk ends with water water everywhere but not a drop to drink. One nugget of interest entering this penultimate…

Okay, for my final post about the suburbs (probably), I say enough about books. Let’s talk about what’s really important: TV, movies, music, and even a little art. On The Tube TV is lousy with images of the suburbs these days, but of course it always has been.  Recently, shows like “Modern Family,” “The Middle,”…

In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009.  We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. In honor of Mother’s Day, this week we have posts by…

  Mixing a drink is seductive in a way writing will never be. The ice sweating in the glass. The chucka, chucka of the metal shaker growing cold in your hands. The invisible melding going on inside that shaker, alcohols blending to become something all together new. The nifty garnishes: olives, citrus, and cherries, twisted,…

The Explosions Mathias Svalina Subito Press, December 2012 136 pages $16.00 [Note: P. Scott Stanfield holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches literature at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Recently, I challenged him to see how many references to other works and artists he could make in a single 500-word review. He gets one point for each,…

You’re sitting across from someone you really dig. One of you is fiddling with a napkin edge or straw wrapper, avoiding eye contact. One of you finally says: It’s not you. It’s me. And then the unraveling begins. One-sided endings are tough, and they occur in more than just human relationships. Custom of the Country…

For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part!  We’re all here because we want to write. We love doing it even when we hate doing it—and we try, valiantly, to put words down both when…

Do you have a plan in place for what to do after an apocalypse? Survivalists do. Survivalists, mainstream North American culture thinks, are a little weird. They prepare for severe disruptions in the order of everyday life, for carrying on when these disruptions obliterate the conveniences of our extensive infrastructure. With their ‘bug-out bags’, they…