Welcome to the new Ploughshares website! For answers to commonly asked questions, read here.
In 2012, we established Ploughshares Solos, a digital-first series for longer stories and essays, edited by Ploughshares Editor-in-Chief Ladette Randolph. Solos were compiled in the Solos Omnibus until 2017, after which they were published in our yearly fall longform issue.
After a decade of publication, we ceased publishing new solos in a digital standalone format. You can still enjoy new longform prose in our fall issue. To read Solos-past, subscribe to the Ploughshares archive, starting at $20. Solos are also still available where e-books are sold for download on your Kindle, Nook, iPad, or Kobo.
One afternoon last week, I was sitting at my kitchen table, doing an online search for Bobby Bocelli. What came up was an entry headed: Robert A. Bocelli, 54, journalist, novelist, play and screenwriter. It sounded like an obituary. My second feeling was shame and guilt about my first feeling, which had been a flash…
Ignacio smiles at Amaia, a wildness in his eyes, then says, “This is it,” and rolls down his window. The traffic cop faces them, neither curious nor annoyed at their appearance on this quiet dirt road. Ignacio hooks his arm over the open window, lifts his chin, attempts casualness. “Aupa.” And had he not done…
Dedicated to the one who “blew the minutest kiss with the barest movement of her lips” 1 The Revolution Comes on Horses When Witold Galitzki was in his late teens, the Revolution happened in Russia. People in Witold’s Galician village agreed that it was the business of Russians, and that they could keep it….
Way down, down the gulch that runs out the half-frozen river, the coyote perks its ears. Its chest rises and falls just above the frost. A breeze dusts snow across the valley in horizontal plumes. Josie watches from a ridge high over the fields. She came to look for the family of kestrels, but she’s…
Kurt Cobain KeepsEagle explored the Harvard Course Guide for Fall 2009. It was like finding a rip in the sky, a secret door he could plunge his head through to see spinning worlds whiz past his face, close enough to grab. For the first time in his life, he felt greedy. I want this, I…
“For decades, scientists and staff at the site experimented with new kinds of nuclear reactors, advanced rocket systems, and futuristic weapons. While this research resulted in scientific advancements, it also left behind a legacy of radioactive and chemical contamination both on the property and in nearby communities according to multiple studies and investigations…Los Angeles County…
I had a boyfriend, sort of, a med student who spent his nights studying at the coffee shop where I worked. He always sat at the table closest to the counter, several books splayed open in a horseshoe around him, so everyone standing in line to order could see what he was working on. Most…
My sister’s body was found twelve days after her birthday, which was the last time I’d seen her. The silence of the interval was nothing extraordinary; we didn’t have reason to speak, and the older we got, the more reason we needed. Our family, like any other, had a certain tension built into it. Falling-outs…
Cañon City was not a city. It was a small, gossiping, high-security town in Colorado’s high desert, bordered to the west by the Sawatch Range. A home rule municipality boasting thirteen prisons and fifty churches, its ten thousand people—one fifth of them locked up—governed themselves as they saw fit and thrived on the stories, true…
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