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Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, a 2008 poetry collection inspired by Hurricane Katrina, reads like a broken heart.  It is open and honest and raw.  The voices of those who survived Katrina, and those who did not, are both unspeakably sad and incredulous.  “Louisiana,” says one nursing home resident in the poem “34,” “goddamn. You lied to…

Plate VI from Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. It took, it seemed, only a few seconds for the first response to appear. My heart plummeted as more appeared in my Twitter feed, each increasingly indignant, ticking off like a plunging stock exchange. I knew there had not been enough…

Reese Okyong Kwon’s writing has appeared in the Believer, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. She has been named one of Narrative’s “30 Below 30” writers, and has received scholarships and fellowships from Yaddo, Ledig House, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. After her story “Victoria Falls Hotel” appeared in the Winter 2012-2013 issue of…

If you’re a writer, you’ve likely subjected yourself to awkward, lifeless Readings enough times to wonder whether there’s still a purpose for these mysterious liturgies. We probably don’t need an old time tent revival (I hope not!)… But asking, “what’s the point?” may be long overdue. What I mean is: perhaps who/whatever began the institution of the Public Reading regarded…

Jack London was one of the last dead authors I expected to charm me. I associated him with wolves (because of the familiar The Call of the Wild book cover) and, unfortunately, Disney movies (because of the adaptation of his novel, White Fang). Of course, I had never actually read him. Now, I wish I…

The Bees and Rapture Carol Ann Duffy Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2013 96 pages / 80 pages $23.00 / $15.00 Editor’s 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…

For most of us, our bodies can be mysteries, but in Ricardo Nuila’s story “Mort Naturelle,” we find them painfully explained. Here’s what happens to a spleen when a parachute doesn’t deploy; here’s how a jaw disappears when it’s been blasted with birdshot; here’s the sinewy tendons from a neck wedged in a closed elevator,…

It’s a digital age, but we’re still mad for paper! Even as readers embrace the connectivity and convenience offered by iPads and Kindles, there are still many good reasons to celebrate a book’s physicality. In Ploughshares’ Book Arts series, we’ll be looking at some of the artists, curators, and craftspeople who work to keep things…