Ploughshares is pleased to present Dantiel W. Moniz with the eighth annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for her short story “Milk Blood Heat,” which appeared in the Spring 2018 issue, guest-edited by Lan Samantha Chang. The $2,500 prize, sponsored by member of the Ploughshares advisory board, longtime patron, acclaimed writer, and former guest editor…
When Julia fell down the basement stairs of Emmaus House and bruised her hip so badly she couldn’t stand, I should have made her congee to help her recover. The dish is easy enough to cook, only slightly more demanding than toast. It falls in the family of comfort-mush including oatmeal, polenta, farina, and grits….
What do you see when you see red? My mind free-associates: the red-light district. Little Red Corvette. Chanel number 99. Van Gogh said that orange is the color of insanity. In The Scarlet Letter, red is the mark of adultery. And then there was the time I was gossiping in the upscale NYC hair salon…
“Success is never so interesting as struggle.” —Willa Cather My sister was like a mother to her boyfriend’s four girls from the age of seventeen until she was twenty-two. Her boyfriend, José, was one of the local drug dealers. He went to the Nebraska State Penitentiary for two years for dealing methamphetamines. When José…
Malcriado Mom pried off a press-on nail and dropped it into her purse. I watched: The bag rattle as our cab flew over another pothole on our way to the airport where we were dropping her off. Mom bragging to the cabdriver about how this was going to be my first time staying in Nicaragua…
Suddenly I’m remembering a public conversation between two Great Straight White Male Writers. We’ve all made the mistake of going to this event at least once, right? After Great Straight White Male Writer 1 reads, it’s time for the Q&A. This is where we’re supposed to find profound insight. The questions are always the…
DeWitt Henry, Sweet Marjoram: Notes and Essays (MadHat Press, October 2018)
Margot Livesey recommends Hungry Ghost Theater by Sarah Stone (WTAW Press, 2018). “I loved this richly imagined, deeply inventive, politically engaged novel about three generations of a family and how they act out, both onstage and in the streets, their pain, fear, and dismay at the state of the world. I reached the last page,…
In nonfiction, our winner is Laura Price Steele for her essay “These Bodies Will Undo Us.” Nonfiction judge Roxane Gay said the following about the winning piece: “‘These Bodies Will Undo Us’…is one of the finest essays I have ever read. It’s an essay about a marriage, about love when your partner transitions and so…
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