I will never, ever tire of reading about summer camp. Inspired by a recent re-reading of my favorite short story—“Brownies” by Z.Z. Packer—I spent the entire month of June in literary camp land. I started with Anton DiSclafani’s unforgettable debut The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls; then I moved on to Liz Moore’s short story…
In our Writing Lessons series, writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Madeline Corey Felix, a student in the MFA program at Columbia University. You can follow Madeline on Twitter @maddsfelix. —Andrew Ladd, Blog Editor I’m sure I’m not the first writing student…
Leah Falk and I once ran from Detroit to Canada. If that feat sounds Herculean, well, it only sort of is; in less sensational terms, we ran the Detroit Half Marathon, two miles of which are spent going back and forth across the Ambassador Bridge and through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, respectively. Fun fact about this…
In my last post I talked about my love of zombies—the blank stares, the hyperfast sprinting, and the social allegory of the undead—and my less-than-love for the resurgence of swoony vampires. In light of the revival of such classic horror monsters, I’m left wondering: what about werewolves? (Or for that matter, mummies—because isn’t a walking…
In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. Between holiday weekends and vacation, lemonade and fireworks, we hope you…
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! Last month’s exercise was to come up with different narratives surrounding an inanimate object. Of all the miscellany on display and tucked away and in my teensy San…
Over the past few months I’ve compared writing to walking, mixing a drink, cooking, and baseball, and you’ve indulged my metaphorical ramblings. But writing is like going on vacation? No siree. Writing is work, hard work. Work that takes dedication and thought and effort. Lots of effort. I’d rather clean my bathtub grout with a…
The Great Gatsby. Les Misérables. Silver Linings Playbook. Sure, plenty of successful movies owe a big debt to books. “Based on the novel by…,” “Best Adapted Screenplay” and all that. But what about great films in which books get out from behind the scenes to drive plot, reveal character, and create atmosphere, becoming actors of…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, only fifty-four lines long, was never completed. The reason? According to Coleridge, he was interrupted by the Person from Porlock and subsequently lost his inspired creativity. “Though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision,” Coleridge wrote of the incident, “all…
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