Introduction

Introduction

Once upon a time, the chief business of the good literary magazines was discovery, the seeking and finding of new and gifted writers. They were discovered, and then they moved on to other stages and places. Old world has changed a whole lot since then. For at least twenty years the good literary magazines have…

Introduction

Editing a literary magazine — and this is the first time I have undertaken a project so fraught with hubris — turns out to be a little like buying birthday presents for your loved ones. You tend to get them things you really want for yourself. In making selections for this issue I have been…

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(Or, Sr. Calvino's Shaving Brush) In a note accompanying "A Letter from the Sahara," Italo Calvino described that piece of writing as a page "from life." It was just days before his death last September in Siena, Italy. Had he lived, he would be in the U.S. at the time of publication of this issue,…

Introduction

When we invited contributions for this issue we said that our theme was “the inter-relationship or overlap of autobiography, biography, and fiction.” We asked potential contributors to “think of the three genres as forming a triangle. We are looking for prose writing — fiction, essay, memoir, journal, etc. — that falls within this area.” We’ve…

Introduction

The last time I edited Ploughshares I knew all the contributors personally and solicited work from them. This time, the opposite is almost literally true: I deliberately set myself the task of confronting what came unsolicited to the magazine and was more on the lookout for work that promised than for names that clicked. Of…

Introduction

When, at the age of twenty-four I sold my first short story – for ten dollars to the now defunct Colorado Quarterly – I had already accumulated, by count, 576 rejection slips. I had also, by this time, written seven unpublished novels. About six months before, after an especially discouraging run of rejections, I'd tried…