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Southwest Airlines recently started holding book readings on their flights. The airline has a history of bringing spontaneous and entertaining events aboard: there was at one point an Imagine Dragons appearance, and once even a wedding. The involved writers are compensated in free airfare, the passengers with free readings–which might seem like a win-win from a…
Literary Enemies: Ann Patchett vs. Zadie Smith Disclaimer: Zadie Smith doesn’t care if she has enemies. I have a recurring dream in which I meet Zadie Smith at a picnic. She compliments my leather jacket—Vintage? she asks—and we begin chatting, and in the end she offers to be my mentor. She’ll teach me how to…
It is fitting that the bowerbird roosts in the opening lines of Ted Hughes’s poem “A Literary Life,” for there is perhaps no better mascot for reader and writer both. The species is a known collector, spending the better part of the year building complicated huts from assorted novelties: colored glass and aluminum tabs, bleached…
Over the last few decades, it has become more and more common to find mythical narratives such as fairy tales alongside realist fiction in academic and mainstream literary journals and magazines. More publications have also opened up to stories that blend storytelling elements that previously were dismissed as “genre” into the style du jour,…
Can a story be truly inspired by a classic while serving as a literary critique of that work? Does critical fiction help us to understand our common archetypes? Absolutely. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck is, perhaps, the model for literature as critical writing. Steinbeck structures Eden around the biblical story of Cain and Abel….
One essential question rises out of the hullabaloo of conflicting opinions broadcast in Cynthia Ozick’s philosophical essay in the New York Times on old vs. new writers and The New Republic’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s prickly response: Why do we write? Both essays are well written, thoughtful, and make excellent points worth considering for writers of…
VIDA released its much-awaited 2014 Count last night, contributing important data to a conversation that seems to have been getting louder over the past couple of months. The gender disparity in the world of literature is far-reaching, with every facet of publishing coming, quite rightly, under scrutiny. We at Ploughshares take this issue very seriously…
I’ve always felt that AWP* could be livened up by a conference-long game of Paintball Assassin. Until that happens, here’s some other stuff to try: The Book Fair Bartering Game: Start with free swag. Something cool, like a box of matches with a chapbook cover on it. Find the bored grad student tending another booth….
“Easter—that’s a weird tradition,” says the comedian Jim Gaffigan in one of his imagined dialogues. He continues: “The day Jesus rose from the dead—what should we do?” “How about eggs?” “What does that have to do with Jesus?” “Alright, we’ll hide them.” “….I don’t follow your logic.” “Don’t worry, there’s a bunny.” And if you’re…
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