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Introduction

For this fortieth anniversary issue, I invited former guest editors to contribute new work of their own, to nominate and introduce an emerging writer, or to give an account of turning points in their careers. Among the twenty-five who responded, I include here fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and poets. Longtime Ploughshares readers will recognize the…

Blackbird

There are thirteen ways to look at a blackbird, but my backyard is not a blackbird,        and I am not Wallace Stevens, but I make do with an air conditioning unit and the remnants of an entertainment center,        the cherry wood stain fading into sod. I look down at this plot of land like I…

Late December

It’s the day after Christmas a flat gray morning where the rain has fallen on the crooked streets and no one has stolen our newspaper, its headline denouncing the young Nigerian, someone’s devout beloved son who tried to blow up a plane, my own son half asleep on the couch in his Levis and unraveled…

About DeWitt Henry

DeWitt Henry, founding editor of Ploughshares, grew up in an affluent suburban neighborhood of Philadelphia, with three older siblings—two brothers and one sister. His father, the owner of a candy factory, was a recovering alcoholic, a brooding, self-absorbed, volatile man. His mother was a self-sacrificing, long-suffering homemaker with artistic interests. Much of Henry’s writing has…

The Deer

I always sat in the back of Mr. Kim’s algebra class. He was very enthusiastic about algebra. I drew a picture of me sticking my dick into Rex’s blond dreamgirl. Rex was on the other side of the room. I folded the paper and wrote Rex on the top, and told this ugly girl, Andrea…

Coming of Age in Book Country

I knew I was back in New York when I saw children walking to school with books open in their hands. I’d lived away for fifteen years. Now down the streets of Brooklyn they drifted, novels spread wide between their palms, the actual world comprising a mere running margin of asphalt and high-heeled shoes and…

The romantic getaway

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…