I have, for at least the past year, been mildly to massively frustrated by the rise of the word “random” as it’s presently used. This is dull in all sorts of ways—every writer’s got his/her words which frustrate, to say nothing of the nebbishness of even bothering to be pissed at some utterance—but I haven’t…
Deborah Eisenberg. Martin Amis. Steve Almond. Alice Munro. Penelope Fitzgerald. Jim Harrison. Anne Carson. W.G. Sebald. Michael Ondaatje. John Updike. These are some of the authors whose books, in recent years, I have all but inhaled, many of them in rapid succession. As I suspect most book lovers do, I feel a strong, almost filial…
This week’s post was originally going to be about literary reading etiquette, complete with some suggestions for how to behave as a reader before, during, and after an event. But Gabrielle Calvocoressi read as part of the River Styx at Duffs Reading Series here in St. Louis the other night and her reading was so…
I don’t know how much needs to be said or written about Olena Kalytiak Davis: won the 1997 Brittingham Prize, lives in Alaska, post-confessional (blah blah blah), shattered sonnets from Tin House, Best American Poetry selection of “Six Apologies Lord,” etc. She also has some of the best music taste of anyone alive and is…
Last winter I was asked to judge two short-story contests, one for my graduate writing program and the other for a local chapter of a national arts organization. Not surprisingly, I was flattered and a little excited to have been asked to serve as judge. What a novelty to be on that side of the…
The day after I played the best game of my middle school basketball career, I read an article explaining the physics of the jump shot. According to the author, there is only a two-ounce difference in pressure between a shot that hits the front of the rim and one that hits the back. There are…
I’m not sure the Ploughshares blog is the perfect venue to feature an interview with the editor of another literary journal, but I’m 100% sure that those who read Ploughshares 1) probably know about other literary journals, and therefore could (and I’d argue should) be interested in them, and 2) read good writing, and could…
Not long ago, I attended a reading in Chicago that featured a talented Brooklyn-based novelist and a long-time friend of hers who had recently published a memoir. During the Q & A session that followed their reading, an attendee asked the memoirist if she had ever considered writing fiction. The memoirist’s reply was one that…
Disclaimer: For those who haven’t experienced David Simon’s HBO series The Wire, you should probably tune out now and hit up your Netflix. Same thing goes to those Wire fans who haven’t finished Season Four. I don’t want to spoil the narrative arc of the season for you. * In my vision, Michael Lee is…
No products in the cart.