Roy and Jimmy Boyle were shooting pool on a rainy Saturday afternoon in Lucky’s El Paso when Mooney Yost, a Lucky’s regular, came in and sat down on a bench near the boys’ table. Yost was about fifty years old, a fin and a sawbuck hustler who was always kind to Roy and his friends….
Today I bow to the power of negative space, the beauty of what’s missing—the hard work of yard work made harder without you, while the stiff kiss of acorns puckers the ground. I am a fool. Even as the red impatiens wither and brown, they are still lovely. I feed the gaping mouths of lawn…
In fiction, our winner is Jasmine Sawers, for her story, “The Culling.” Ploughshares fiction editor Margot Livesey writes: “From its opening paragraph, when the midwife sees a lantern flickering in the distance, ‘The Culling’ transported me. I admire the vivid use of detail, and I particularly admire how much the author omits, creating a sense…
On the morning she became a young widow, my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow, looked up from her work to see a hawk turn her prized rooster into a cloud of feathers. That same moment, halfway around the world in a Minnesota mine, her husband died, buried under a ton of rockfall. She told…
The auditorium falls to a hush. The audience settles in their seats. Sun backlights the room through a wall of windows: this evening of summer solstice. The first reader walks to the podium. She is a novelist, and this novelist smiles at the room, a graceful and warm and kind smile, welcoming everyone and introducing…
In nonfiction, our winner is Jacob Newberry, for his essay “What You Will Do,” about his experiences in Israel and Palestine. The essay, Ploughshares’ Editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, writes, “is the story of Newberry’s own well-intentioned but misguided determination to resolve the differences between the Palestinians and Israelis (one shopping trip into Palestine at a time). It…
The sun was nothing more than an orange the day Lisa ran for the ice cream truck. It was small and even if it held sweetness, even if it seeped Vitamin C, it couldn’t stop the car from barreling down Mott Avenue, couldn’t shine enough to show the driver the eight-year-old girl dashing in front…
You are a wretch and a leech and a dirty old man and have been trying to push inside me for years. Well, come on then. There’s something about the plum warm air. Usually at this time of day I don’t want to see people. Usually when I’m on the old swings I think about…
In poetry, our winner is Jen Silverman, for her series of Bath poems. Ploughshares poetry editor John Skoyles writes: “Silverman’s poems have a declarative force and a surprise in every phrase, a combination that results in a tone both intimate and astonishing.” Silverman is a New York–based poet and playwright who has, so far, mainly…
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