We live alone together except for five cats, yet sometimes the only way to be truly alone is to run away together. Away from the computer, e-mail, Facebook, the cell phone, the land line, meetings, the endless list of things to be done— that no matter how many I cross off, keeps growing so that…
Since 1971, Ploughshares has been committed to promoting the work of up-and-coming writers. In the spirit of the magazine’s founding mission, the Emerging Writer’s Contest honors work by authors who are just beginning to publish and have yet to receive widespread recognition. The contest was limited to fiction this year. Next year, we will be…
A wild early April strangeness, crazier than any autumn evening, mild air full of flooding wind, motions of storming branches, a queer, creaky, crying sound way off, as the rain advances— What’s that?—thud of thunder? a big tree going down? the sound of the untime after? No, only the hour of the changes, swift, oceanic,…
It surprises me that immigrants brought rootstock of roses in their luggage. Scots roses, spinosissima, Eglanteria, the briar rose that spread out into New England: bits of thorny fragrance that smelled like home. Mostly they were at least as tough as the people who carted them here. I can understand seeds of grain, of vegetables,…
I recently worked with Nickolas Butler here in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His literary focus remains the same, explorations of the human quest for meaning and value. In this story, Lyle, the primary character, loses his settled job and his settled place within a community. Searching for a deeper, more meaningful sense of self, he…
The duende got into my head by the back staircase, a gypsy girl-child dressed in red with an old man’s face. My bedroom turned bitter cold. There were banging noises, loud knockings in between the walls. Things left their places. My comb crawled across the bureau, clicking like castanets. My grandmother’s ivory-backed mirror cracked itself…
I was born in the Tuscan city of Siena, and among my earliest and fondest memories is having sat long ago on my father’s lap at a table outside the Piazza del Campo, with the Fountain of Gaia gurgling nearby, watching, wide-eyed, as Papa’s pencil turned blank paper into cartoon animals on my behalf. His…
“Downstream” accomplishes several things I find deeply pleasing. First and foremost, it allows me to spend time in the company of a character whose wit and determination I admire from the opening paragraph. Almost everyone seems to be against Clay—his parents, his grandparents, his neighbor, the local shopkeeper—but, however many slings and arrows come his…
The wolves came down from the hills and carried away the children of Chinook. The village lay wedged into a horseshoe beneath those white hills, twelve winding miles from Norton Sound. First one child was taken at the start of winter as he tugged his sled at the edge of a slope; another was snatched…
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