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Okay, for my final post about the suburbs (probably), I say enough about books. Let’s talk about what’s really important: TV, movies, music, and even a little art. On The Tube TV is lousy with images of the suburbs these days, but of course it always has been.  Recently, shows like “Modern Family,” “The Middle,”…

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. In honor of Mother’s Day, this week we have posts by…

  Mixing a drink is seductive in a way writing will never be. The ice sweating in the glass. The chucka, chucka of the metal shaker growing cold in your hands. The invisible melding going on inside that shaker, alcohols blending to become something all together new. The nifty garnishes: olives, citrus, and cherries, twisted,…

The Explosions Mathias Svalina Subito Press, December 2012 136 pages $16.00 [Note: P. Scott Stanfield holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches literature at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Recently, I challenged him to see how many references to other works and artists he could make in a single 500-word review. He gets one point for each,…

You’re sitting across from someone you really dig. One of you is fiddling with a napkin edge or straw wrapper, avoiding eye contact. One of you finally says: It’s not you. It’s me. And then the unraveling begins. One-sided endings are tough, and they occur in more than just human relationships. Custom of the Country…

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!  We’re all here because we want to write. We love doing it even when we hate doing it—and we try, valiantly, to put words down both when…

Do you have a plan in place for what to do after an apocalypse? Survivalists do. Survivalists, mainstream North American culture thinks, are a little weird. They prepare for severe disruptions in the order of everyday life, for carrying on when these disruptions obliterate the conveniences of our extensive infrastructure. With their ‘bug-out bags’, they…

The Bookmarks series will profile unique bookstores and literary spaces across the country. These landmarks, often celebrated within the cities featured in our Literary Boroughs series, are home to myriad readings, panels, classes, workshops, and—of course—books. Posts are merely introductions to these spaces; we encourage readers to contribute additional details in the comments section. I…

Note: Following the Marathon bombings, and the subsequent citywide lockdown, we took a conscious decision to keep the blog free of commentary about both—despite several contributors volunteering. A literary journal isn’t the place for punditry or analysis of current events, we decided, and there were plenty of other places to find that if you were…