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I’m not sure about anyone else, but I can remember feeling stuck as a kid. I was an impatient child (and now I’m an impatient adult). A summer then felt like an entire year. A two-hour trip to the store with my parents seemed to occupy an entire interminable afternoon. There were moments when I…

Ru Kim Thúy (translated by Sheila Fischman) Bloomsbury USA, November 2012 160 pages $14.00 Nguyễn An Tinh was born into a wealthy Saigon family during the Tet Offensive, “when the long chains of firecrackers draped in front of houses exploded polyphonically along with the sound of machine guns.” She has a beautiful mansion, servants, and…

We had a sixteen-hour layover in Madrid en route to South Africa, and there were three things I wanted to do before we left: walk around the Plaza Mayor, eat jamón ibérico, and visit the Museo Reina Sofia. The first two were checked off fairly quickly, as we followed the multinational throng around the Plaza…

  Every time I read Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities I get something different from it.  Like NPR’s Eric Weiner writes, “I leave it, again and again, and yet never discover it—never really know it.” This latest reading, for me, boils down to one thing: the act of searching, of trying to grasp something that’s always…

The ‘Writers and Their Pets’ series began with my own desire to celebrate my dog Sally, and over the coming months I will also invite other writers to share with the rest of us the details of their lives with beloved pets. We also ask contributors to the series to tell us about their favorite pets from literature….

We’re excited to announce a new feature for the Ploughshares Blog geared towards writing students: “Writing Lessons.” In this feature writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. The exciting part of this feature is that we want to hear from you, writing students! What have you learned or…

1) First, smell it. Look at the new arrivals, lined up like candy. See if, for one second, you can remember what it was like to walk into a bookstore as a reader. Just a reader, a happy, curious reader. With no agenda, no insecurities, no history of bookstores as scenes of personal failure and…

In Round Four, the Fantasy Blog Draft Managers will set you free with the truth—this week they’re picking nonfiction writers. But the big question is where within the genre of nonfiction will their picks take them? Whence will this truth (or perhaps “truthiness”?) originate? Nonfiction is, arguably, the widest genre we have in writing. It…