What is the importance of reading and writing in this moment? Those who come from overtly troubled communities and countries have long known that literature holds enormous power: the veracity that can bring about humility, death, growth, and change. As a child walking to school in the tumult of 1940s China, my mother saw men…
What are these stories and why are they here? As this issue’s guest editor, I suppose it’s part of my job to justify their existence, though, as with my own work, I’m tempted to say just read them. No disclaimers or praise from me will change your appreciation of them. Their charms should be self-evident,…
In the fall of 2016, I traveled to China for the first time, a two-month fellowship sponsored by the Shanghai Writers’ Association. I was there to work on a new novel, but in reality, I spent much of my time and attention putting together this issue of Ploughshares. It was a good time to be…
It’s thought that when Cervantes embarked on Don Quixote, he intended to write a short novel. Henry James’ short stories had a way of growing into novellas and novels, a fate he fondly cursed. With Chekhov, it was the other way round: life was too short for the novel. (Though perhaps just long enough for…
When you reach “a certain age,” time begins to accelerate, and you become acutely aware that there’s much less time ahead than behind. And when your older friends start dying, the closer you were to them, the more their deaths seem impossible, a mistake, some stupid oversight—a fatal lapse of attention that resulted in their…
I chose this life I’m inhabiting, the mousy isolation of a writer who distantly teaches, the husband and two small children and the house with its monthly measure of death called a mortgage. Still, I’m wary of accumulation; my impulse is to pare to the bone. We have seasonal fits of surrendering goods, giving away,…
In the fall of 2012, I received a call from my friend, the painter Pat de Groot. She told me that Neil Astley was visiting her in Provincetown with the artist and filmmaker, Pamela Robertson-Pearce, and she asked if I wanted to meet them. Of course I did. I had admired Bloodaxe books for years,…
While it is only possible for this Ploughshares transatlantic issue to offer a snapshot of current British and Irish poetry, I have tried to make it as representative as possible. Most of the poets I’ve been able to solicit work from are included in one or other of the three most recent generational anthologies published…
I was flattered when asked to guest-edit this issue of Ploughshares. I am proud to offer these stories. When selecting them, I was looking for range and adventurousness. I did not want stories that read or looked alike. These range from so-called mimetic to so-called meta. I do not like such labels and I hope…
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