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Screenshot of a phone screen with the poem "The Man whose Pharynx was bad" by Wallace Stevens

Close Watching: Tech + Text = The Reading Paradigm of the Future?!

  When it comes to good ol’-fashioned reading, the influence of new-fangled technology is rarely construed as “positive.” A recent Pew Internet Study suggests our that our brains are being “rewired” for attention deficiency by nonstop, rapid-fire access to information. Adbusters’ Micah White accuses the Kindle of “mimicking the external traits of a book while destroying…

The text: "It was a dark and stormy night..." in typewriter font

For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #2: Prompts!

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! Alrighty friends, it’s been two weeks since we kicked things off by putting pen(cil) to paper—how did everyone do? I was consistent, for the most part. Even…

black and white photograph of three baseball players, but their faces have been photoshopped with the faces of JK Rowling, Edgar Allen Poe, and Shakespeare

Ploughshares Fantasy Blog Draft – An Introduction

For too long, fantasy sports have been confined to—well, actual sports. Whether it’s historical fantasy sports or contemporary fantasy sports, the literary world has watched from the sidelines as number crunchers and keg tappers compete for glory in an imaginary world of teams with pun–tastic names like “Sproles Royce,” “Apocalypse Noah,” “Austin Rivers Runs Through…

photo of a man in a green vest holding up a blue shirt

Binding Community: North Branch Projects Turns Pizza Boxes into Books

Frustrated by the gulf between the contemporary art world and the people he cares for most, visual artist and bookbinder Regin Igloria founded North Branch Projects in the Chicago neighborhood where he grew up, Albany Park. In this small, independently run project space, Igloria offers hand bookbinding sessions free of charge six days a week, using…