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In the ‘Writers Do It Best’ series, contributors reflect on how their education and experiences as writers have uniquely prepared them for their lives outside the writing world. Today, we hear from Luke Wiget, a student in the MFA program at The New School. You can follow Luke on Twitter @godsteethandme. I am a male…

Maxine Kumin, a longtime friend of Ploughshares, passed away on February 6th at the age of 88. She published first with us in Spring 1974. It was an excerpt from a journal about raising horses and living in the country, which she continued to do for the rest of her life. In the piece, she…

YOU GUYS. On January 29th, headlines declared that a poetry-loving schoolteacher in Russia killed his friend for asserting that prose was “the only real literature.” (Read the (short) story here.) Um. This is not how you should get in the news. But neither is this: in response to the poetry murder, the Huffington Post ran a rhymed and…

The ‘Writers and Their Pets’ series began with my own desire to celebrate my dog Sally, and since then I have also invited other writers to share with the rest of us the details of their lives with beloved pets. Today, please enjoy this essay by our blog editor, Andrew Ladd. —Ladette Randolph, Editor-in-Chief Many of the essays we’ve…

    In honor of Valentine’s Day later this week, and my first post in a series of writing prompts, I present to you this ever so schmaltzy “Cupid in a Wine Glass.” (More on that in a minute.) Between drafting my first novel and teaching creative writing to undergraduates and adults, I’ve been happily…

It’s 1979 and the Mad Men-esque execs were in a cab, on the way to present a corporate identity theme to the bigwigs at GE. The current version was pretty clunky and they knew it: We make the things that make life good.” Their agency teams had spent weeks researching, brainstorming, even songwriting. Ad man…

I was 21 years old when I first read José Emilio Pacheco, one of Mexico’s premier literary writers, who died earlier this month. I found him by being nosy, browsing through my friend’s bookshelves while he was having sex with his girlfriend in her father’s Land Rover, somewhere out on top of a hill. She…

Pioneer Girl Bich Minh Nguyen Viking Adult, February 2014 $26.95 304 pages Genre: literary mystery With reference to: Little House on the Prairie And: immigrant lit & ethnic lit And: restlessness vs. belonging Also: Manifest Destiny & Utopia Concerning: Lee Lien, jobless English PhD And: a (possibly) very well-travelled gold pin Surface questions: Is the…

A few months ago, I met a self-publishing millionaire. In just eighteen months, she had gone from an underpaid office worker with a laid-off husband to a beloved romantic erotica writer pulling in $50,000 a month.  She was willing to entertain offers from a big publisher, though none were likely to pay her enough to…