Postscripts

Zacharis Award  Ploughshares and Emerson College are pleased to present Elizabeth Gilbert with the ninth annual John C. Zacharis First Book Award for her collection of stories, Pilgrims (Houghton Mifflin, 1997; Mariner, 1998). The $1,500 award — which is named after the college’s former president — honors the best debut book by a Ploughshares writer,…

Contributor Spotlight  With her long story in this issue, Megan Staffel makes a return to our pages — indeed, to any magazine’s pages — after an absence of twenty years, and this fall, her third book, The Notebook of Lost Things, will be published by Soho Press twelve years after her last novel saw print….

Favorite Poems  Robert Pinsky has just finished two consecutive terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and he has ensured that he will be a difficult act to follow. Traditionally, the only specific duties of the poet laureate, who is appointed by the Library of Congress, are to give a lecture and reading…

Cohen Awards  Each year, we honor the best short story and poem published in Ploughshares with the Cohen Awards, which are wholly sponsored by our longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners — each of whom receives a cash prize of $600 — are selected by our…

Cohen Awards  Each year, we honor the best short story and poem published in Ploughshares with the Cohen Awards, which are wholly sponsored by our longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners — each of whom receives a cash prize of $600 — are selected by our…

Zacharis Award  Ploughshares and Emerson College are pleased to present David Gewanter with the eighth annual John C. Zacharis First Book Award for his collection of poems, In the Belly, which was published last year by the University of Chicago Press. The $1,500 award — which is funded by Emerson College and named after the…

Cohen Awards Each year, we honor the best short story and poem published in Ploughshares with the Cohen Awards, which are wholly sponsored by our longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners — each of whom receives a cash prize of $600 — are selected by our…

Cohen Awards Each year, we honor the best short story and poem published in Ploughshares with the Cohen Awards, which are wholly sponsored by our longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners — each of whom receives a cash prize of $600 — are selected by our…

Johnny Appleseed  When Andrew Carroll was a junior at Columbia University, a friend gave him a copy of a speech by Joseph Brodsky. Carroll was studying English literature at the time, but he had chosen the major for purely utilitarian reasons — his ambition was to become a movie and television producer, and he had…