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Cover art for Happy Life by David Budbill

Dear Dr. Poetry

Happy Life by David Budbill Copper Canyon Press, August 2011 122 pages $16.00 [Editor’s note: “Dear Dr. Poetry,” a new column by Shannon Wagner, will appear regularly on this blog.]   Dear Dr. Poetry When I sold my VW van to buy my first suit for a job at Mega Corp, my aura began browning…

Close up photograph of a black bird

Writing a Winning Story

When Ploughshares Editor-in-Chief Ladette Randolph told me that I won the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s contest, I felt elated and grateful. Finally! A top literary journal was publishing me. I had been published before in several smaller literary journals, but this was Ploughshares. I believed I had made a career-altering breakthrough.

Photograph of a large blue synagogue with a good domed roof

An Interview with Hala Salah Eldin Hussein

I’m delighted to devote this week’s blog post to someone who is taking a bold stand for literature. Three years ago, my agent forwarded me an e-mail from an editor/translator in Cairo. Hala Salah Eldin Hussein was interested in publishing some of my work in Arabic translation in her online literary journal, Albawtaka Review. Her…

Photograph of a opened pomegranate

Blurbese: “Haunting”

In his new regular column, our blog book reviews editor Andrew Ladd looks at “blurbese,” the contemporary language of book reviews, and names its most egregious offenders. What is it about book critics and the heebie-jeebies? Show most reviewers a pulpy horror story and they’ll turn up their noses with a sniff about genre fiction;…