Leda would take the train. She hadn’t been on one in some time. A few days before, she read about a woman who killed herself on the track. She just lay there until it came. You never heard of that anymore—it seemed to have gone out of style. She didn’t think it was the best…
The Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction Ploughshares is pleased to present Karl Taro Greenfeld with the second annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story, “Strawberries,” which appeared in the Winter 2012-2013 issue of Ploughshares, edited by Ladette Randolph and John Skoyles. The $1,000 award, given by acclaimed writer and Ploughshares advisory editor…
Emerging Writer’s Contest Since 1971, Ploughshares has been committed to promoting the work of up-and-coming writers. This is the third year of our Emerging Writer’s Contest, and our second accepting submissions in all three genres—poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. We are pleased to announce the following winners and runners-up. The winners will each receive $1,000 and…
Growing up, there were always two laws.My mother, the greater, the greatestWho made enemies if necessary outOf the trashman or the paperboy.Queen without her court and details,Commands so precise, you could notFollow if you were not one of her students;If you did not know her nobility you mightThink she was crazy in her house dressStanding…
It must seem an odd—even disqualifying—admission in an editor, even a guest editor, but I don’t really like to judge fiction, though that hasn’t stopped me doing so for Ploughshares, or in the past (not least each winter when I, along with my colleagues, read several hundred MFA applications). On reflection, my unease is less…
During my first weeks as managing editor for Ploughshares, Seamus Heaney’s transatlantic writing issue, 6/1, arrived from the printer, ready to be bagged and mailed to subscribers. Michael Mazur’s monotype portrait of Heaney had appeared on the cover of 5/3, accompanying an interview by issue editor Jim Randall, just as Heaney began his decades of…
When the sun broke up the thunderheads, and dissonance was consigned to its proper place, the world was at once foreign and known to me, that was shame leaving the body. I had lived my life from small relief to small relief, like a boy pulling a thorn from his foot. Wet and glistening, twisting…
My mom says my dad had to work so hard he didn’t really notice how angry it made him. Nowadays he can’t watch the news without losing his temper. He comes from country people who hated the government going all the way back to the revolution. My mom says my dad’s grandfather used to talk…
Sadie’s lover, Marcus, called her every Thursday from Chicago as he drove to and from marriage counseling. (His wife drove separately, it goes without saying.) The end result of this was that it felt as if the three of them were in counseling together, but Sadie sort of liked that. The reason Marcus had to…
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