Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. — “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” I didn’t do a lot of revision before beginning my MFA. This isn’t because I didn’t see the value of the process; it simply didn’t…
Thomas Lee is the first winner of our Emerging Writer’s Contest. His story, “The Gospel of Blackbird,” appears in the current Alice Hoffman issue, and he is also one of our new guest bloggers. We sat down and spoke with him several months ago about balancing work and writing, the Korean-American community, and the inspiration…
Come In and Cover Me Gin Phillips Riverhead Books, January 2012 342 pages $26.95 “What did people do when they abandoned their center? Did they create a new thing altogether, or did they cling to old habits?” Silas Cooper, an archaeologist in Gin Phillips’s second novel, Come In and Cover Me, asks these questions about…
Rejection is a part of writing. Many years ago, a great writer who has published several books (who shall remain nameless) told me that she still gets rejected by journals more often than she gets published. This gave me hope as a writer. Rejections from journals didn’t necessarily mean I was a bad writer. It’s…
A few weeks ago, my nine-year-old daughter handed me the first love note she’d ever received. It was a white paper napkin tied with a bit of shiny blue ribbon. Below the ribbon were pink magic-marker dots and a green number 1. A boy had slipped it into the pocket of her jacket during the…
When you’re drinking Rolling Rock with a bunch of poets after a sparsely attended reading in a far-flung corner of Brooklyn, it’s hard to keep in mind that writing isn’t just an art—it’s a business. Especially in poetry, it’s easy to become enamored of the bohemian aspect of the writing life, to cultivate a contempt…
Noir Robert Coover Overlook/Duckworth Books, November 2011 192 pages $14.00 This post was written by Lynne Weiss. It’s a perfect night. Wind, rain, gloomily overcast, the puddled reflections more luminous than the street lamps they reflect. You’re Philip M. Noir, and you’re looking for a story—or maybe you’re trying to find the story in a…
Yes, I am a lawyer. There are so many lawyer-writers, it’s cliche at this point. Off the top of my head, there’s John Grisham, Scott Turow, Stephen Carter, Brad Meltzer, Amy Chua, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Min Jin Lee…and the list goes on and on. In every genre and in every form of writing, you are likely…
Issue: Spring 1997 This is a review of a back issue of Ploughshares. The author won our “Free Ploughshares” contest that we hosted earlier this year and agreed to review his/her free issue. This post was written by Mary Stone Dockery. Enjoy! In the Spring 1997 issue of Ploughshares, guest editor Yusef Komunyakaa says, “Many…
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