Nonfiction

Introduction

In Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli writes: “I suppose that documenting things—through the lens of a camera, on paper, or with a sound-recording device—is really only a way of contributing one more layer, something like soot, to all the things already sedimented in a collective understanding of the world.” I’m writing this introduction in the…

Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction

Ploughshares is pleased to present Kaitlyn Greenidge with the tenth annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for her story “Doers of the Word,” which appeared in the Summer 2020 issue, guest-edited by Celeste Ng. The $2,500 prize, sponsored by acclaimed writer, former guest editor, longtime patron, and member of the Ploughshares advisory board Alice Hoffman,…

The Ultimate Alchemy

In the Boston of inherited wealth, the five fetching Rotch daughters were raised in a Commonwealth Avenue mansion in the same Back Bay neighborhood as the Crosby and Bigelow families. The eldest daughter, Josephine, was engaged to marry Albert Bigelow the day after Bert’s graduation from Harvard. But when Josie and her mother sailed to…