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Innovators in Lit: featherproof books

featherproof books is an indie press founded by Zach Dodson and Jonathan Messinger. They are based in Chicago, and their serious literary chops—recent titles include Patrick Somerville’s The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, Lindsay Hunter’s Daddy’s, Christian TeBordo’s The Awful Possibilities, Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas, and Amelia Gray’s AM/PM—and genius eye for design have garnered…

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Free Ploughshares! Featuring Guest Editor Philip Levine

Here at Ploughshares, we’ve been lucky enough that the new Poet Laureate of the United States Philip Levine has guest edited our magazine not once, but two times in our forty year history. Today we’re featuring the first issue, published in Winter 1988 and filled with contributions from writers as diverse as Yusef Komunyakaa, Dean…

Cover art for American Short Story Masterpieces

My Anthology: “Walking Out” By David Quammen

Sometimes I daydream about putting together an anthology of my favorite short stories, kind of like a mix tape. Over the course of my blogging duties, I’m going to discuss a few of the stories that—from my experience—aren’t as familiar to readers. My Anthology: “Walking Out” By David Quammen I first encountered this story in…

Cover art for We the Animals by Justin Torres

We The Animals

We the Animals Justin Torres Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 125 pages $18.00 In We the Animals, Justin Torres demonstrates how crafting one tactile sentence after another can transform even the most ugly imaginations, experiences, and memories into a work beautiful to behold. In this debut semi-autobiographical novel, Torres asserts himself as a master of detail and…

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Innovators in Lit #2: Vouched Books

Our second “innovators in literature” brings us into the world of Vouched Books, an organization devoted to promoting small press literature. I deeply admire founder Christopher Newgent’s proactive, passionate approach to spreading the word about books, the way he talks about the possibility of “setting up on the main party stretch here in Indy on…