In fiction, our winner is Memory Blake Peebles, for her story âThe Sugar Bowl.â ââThe Sugar Bowl,ââ Ploughsharesâ fiction editor Margot Livesey, writes, âis about one of those evenings when, for good or ill but surely irrevocably, the tectonic plates of a family shift: new alignments are formed, bridges between continents disappear. In a…
an excerpt from In a Foreign Country The map haunts you. You spotted it the day you arrived, hanging on the back of an office door. The words “Land Mine Areas, Bosnia-Herzegovina” are printed in large letters across the top, and each land mine area is labeled on it with a tiny, pale red dot….
When Shirley Weems submarines her Barbiein the shallows, spooking the catfishwhile her brother and me sit on upturned bucketswith cane poles on our side of the pondnot bothering anybody, I notehow the light around Shirley seems so rosy,all a-twinkle with its ownself-contained Shirley music. I pick a dirt clodI donât think contains a rock, but…
In poetry, our winner is Josephine Yu, for her poems, âNever Trust a Poem That Begins with a Dreamâ and âNarcissist Revises Tidal Theory.â Ploughsharesâ poetry editor, John Skoyles, writes: âJosephine Yuâs 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 sunflowerâ still hanging on your bedroom wall. You made it in school. You loved it so muchyou wouldnât stop making it. Or couldnâtstop. We donât agree, on what you said.But I was your favorite. I thought, What kind of boymakes such a basket? Professional looking, alltight and golden,…
Some say the Army and some the Marines and some say the Air Force is the greatest sightsweeping over this crippled earth but I say love for example a wedding the brideâs face hiddenas though no longer hers to share                                  and the sound of wailing               oh, Anaktoria what have they done the soldiers                           on your wedding day
In nonfiction, our winner is Mary Winsor, for her essay âRock-a-bye, Ute.â Ploughsharesâ Editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, writes, âMary Winsorâs essay, âRock-a-bye, Ute,â is a meditation on environmental history, native American legend, and familyâwith its bittersweet ties to the pastârefracted through the lens of second chances after bodily pain and loss. As her western family gathers…
and I answer by driving around, which seemsto me the most American of activities, up therewith waving the incendiary dandelion of sparklersor eating potato salad with green specks of relish,the German kind, salad of immigrants, of allthe strange pickled bits we carryover from other places, like we did on Eastermornings in Nebraska, stuffing our Sundayshoes…
a father has lost his son. He circles shoe racks, lingerie, dressing rooms, calling out âMarco!âŚMarco!âŚâ We all want to help, but itâs justtoo much: Oh, the tragedy of namingthen losing a son named Marcoâborn to love and to wander, whole head submerged in the starched cup of an outsized Playtex bra, divingback between a…
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