In the Plan B essay series, writers discuss their contingency plans, extraliterary passions, and the roads not traveled. The way my husband tells the story, I slipped on the ice, got a concussion, and when I woke up, said, “I want to learn to play the accordion.” It is true that, after a concussion,…
According to my diary, it was on May 29, 1998, that I received an invitation to the Séance Book Club. The letter from a Mrs. Lisette Visser read in part, “We would appreciate your being with us on eight consecutive evenings, during which we will summon the characters from your novel, The Museum Guard, and…
In poetry, our winner is Josephine Yu, for her poems, “Never Trust a Poem That Begins with a Dream” and “Narcissist Revises Tidal Theory.” Ploughshares’ poetry editor, John Skoyles, writes: “Josephine Yu’s poems are alternately sprightly and grave, saucy and sincere. You never know what you might find: a Catholic school girl blouse next…
A basket in the shape of a sunflower— still hanging on your bedroom wall. You made it in school. You loved it so much you wouldn’t stop making it. Or couldn’t stop. We don’t agree, on what you said. But I was your favorite. I thought, What kind of boy makes such a basket? Professional…
Some say the Army and some the Marines and some say the Air Force is the greatest sight sweeping over this crippled earth but I say love for example a wedding the bride’s face hidden as though no longer hers to share and the sound of wailing oh, Anaktoria what have they done the soldiers…
In nonfiction, our winner is Mary Winsor, for her essay “Rock-a-bye, Ute.” Ploughshares’ Editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, writes, “Mary Winsor’s essay, ‘Rock-a-bye, Ute,’ is a meditation on environmental history, native American legend, and family—with its bittersweet ties to the past—refracted through the lens of second chances after bodily pain and loss. As her western family gathers…
and I answer by driving around, which seems to me the most American of activities, up there with waving the incendiary dandelion of sparklers or eating potato salad with green specks of relish, the German kind, salad of immigrants, of all the strange pickled bits we carry over from other places, like we did on…
a father has lost his son. He circles shoe racks, lingerie, dressing rooms, calling out “Marco!…Marco!…” We all want to help, but it’s just too much: Oh, the tragedy of naming then losing a son named Marco— born to love and to wander, whole head submerged in the starched cup of an outsized Playtex bra,…
In the Plan B essay series, writers discuss their contingency plans, extraliterary passions, and the roads not traveled. As a student in Tokyo in the 1980s I would often go to the local Shinto shrine just to listen to the quiet. Small and undistinguished, a gap between concrete commercial buildings, the shrine was…
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