The Architect of FlowersWilliam LychackMariner Books, March 2011176 Pages$14.00 This book review was written by Walt McGough. “Still with us?” asks the narrator of “Stolpestad,” the first story in William Lychack’s collection The Architect of Flowers. That the question comes only two paragraphs into the book is instructive: Lychack has crafted a sequence of stories concerned…
We are currently having trouble attributing posts with WordPress. This post was written by Laura van den Berg. I’m very excited to start my guest-blogging tenure at Ploughshares, where I will be bringing you nice people weekly interviews with “innovators in literature.” Whether it’s a different vision of what a publishing house can be or…
This is the ninth week of our free Ploughshares contest, and this time we’re featuring our Spring 1988 issue, guest edited by the poet Maxine Kumin. This issue also feature work by Joyce Carol Oates, Donald Hall, and Susannah Kaysen. In order to win this wonderful issue, please leave a comment in the space provided…
You Are My Heart and Other Stories Jay Neugeboren Two Dollar Radio, May 2011 194 pages $16.00 All authors have subject matter to which they constantly return, consciously or not. For Dickens it was the lower classes, for John Irving it’s small town New Hampshire—and for Jay Neugeboren, in his new collection of stories, You…
Like most of us, I spent the early stages of my literary career wondering off and on what They wanted. You know Them: the Editors. The mysterious voice of validation or doom (usually doom.) They accept or reject without comment from the cloudy pinnacles of Olympus, or (as I found out in grad school) their…
If You Knew Then What I Know Now Ryan Van Meter Sarabande Books, April 2011 176 pages $15.95 In “First,” the opening essay of Ryan Van Meter’s autobiographical collection, Van Meter’s five-year-old self tells his best friend Ben that he loves him. When Ben responds the same way, Van Meter takes the next leap and…
Awake. This far north the sun is an early riser, though it stays groggy with fog till mid-morning. The red-checked garter snake still sleeps beneath the front stoop; the window spider still clings to the center of last night’s web, spangled with wings. The desultory cries of a crow. An old engine clearing its throat…
We’ve arrived at week eight of our free Ploughshares contest, and we’re reaching back in the archives to feature our Spring 1990 issue, guest-edited by Rita Dove and featuring work by Marilyn Hacker and many others! Fun fact: this issue is actually a few months older than the intern typing this to you. In order…
America Pacifica: A NovelAnna NorthReagan Arthur Books, May 2011304 pages$24.99 In her debut novel, Anna North dares to enter the dystopic territory staked out by the ruling high priestesses of literary speculative fiction, Margaret Atwood and Octavia E. Butler: America Pacifica features an ordinary heroine with an extraordinary destiny; a punishing climate; and a morally bankrupt,…
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