Least Appealing Summer Residencies

Valerie Brennan is the artist whose painting appears on the cover of our Spring 2011 issue, guest edited by Colm Toibin.  I (the web/marketing editor here at Ploughshares) asked her a few questions about this particular painting, current inspirations, and her work in general. Ploughshares: First off, is there an answer to the question “What…

I first read The Sun Also Rises in college, in a survey course of the American Novel. I don’t know if such survey courses even exist anymore, or if Hemingway is still taught to our undergraduates. But I took this class during springtime in Kentucky, which is long and warm, and I would read the…

This week, I asked Becky Tuch to respond to some common misconceptions about literary magazines. Here are her responses. 1. No one reads them. Literary magazines may not have a mainstream audience. But they do have a very specific and enthusiastic audience. Their readers are poets, lovers of the short story, admirers of flash fiction,…