Monthly Archive:: December 2011

My Anthology

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
After kindly reading some of my paeans to my favorite stories, people have asked me what the rest of my anthology would look like. To limit myself, I’ve decided to only include stories released since 1980, which seemed like a nice, round year, and I would argue that the

Blue Nights

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Blue Nights Joan Didion Alfred A. Knopf, November 2011 208 pages $25.00 This post was written by Jaya Aninda Chatterjee. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote author and cultural critic Joan Didion in The White Album, her chronicle of the revolutionary politics of the 1960s and ’70s.

Winter Books: Anti-Beach Reads, Ski Reads, and Skillbuilders

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
There are many different ways to respond to the weather that is bearing down on this part of the world. Alcohol is an old strategy; SAD lamps are a newer one. For our money, nothing beats books. Here is a wintry mix of our literary strategies for getting through

The Ecstasy of Influence

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc. Jonathan Lethem Doubleday, November 2011 464 pages $27.95 Have you ever found, after a long trip with a friend, that you’ve grown tired of their voice? That approximates how I felt after reading Jonathan Lethem’s most recent collection of prose, The Ecstasy of

Innovators in Literature: Instant Replay, Part 2

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
For my last ever Ploughshares blog post (double sniff!), I bring you Part 2 of the Innovators in Literature Instant Replay. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to “Innovators in Lit,” read and commented on the interviews, and helped spread the word. After talking to 15 amazing literary innovators, I can’t help

A Conversation with Jamil Zaki About Empathy and Writing

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
I met Jamil Zaki at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2004. I had recently been in an, ahem, altercation, and the first thing that our workshop leader Daniel Wallace did upon greeting us was point at me and say, “So what’s your story?” After I sheepishly described the

The Forgotten Waltz

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
The Forgotten Waltz Anne Enright W.W. Norton and Company, October 2011 259 pages $15.95 This post was written by Caitlin O’Neil Amaral. For a second-generation Irish American like me, whose family has turned the old sod into a mythical land of sorrow and song, Anne Enright is a bracing