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Ploughshares is the award-winning non-profit literary magazine based at Emerson College in Boston. Most of our print issues are guest-edited, and our mission is to present varying viewpoints. Our blog is an extension of our print publication, and so we feature writing from guest-bloggers. We present their opinions to our readers in order to foster a lively discussion, but do not necessarily endorse all viewpoints published on our blog.
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Monthly Archives: August 2012
Canada
Canada Richard Ford Ecco, May 2012 432 pages $27.99 I found myself humming Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” while reading Richard Ford’s Canada—only instead of “Joe Diamaggio,” I sang “Frank Bascombe,” the hero of the Ford Trilogy that began with … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews
Tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, Canada, Frank Bascombe, Pulitzer Prize, Richard Ford, Sherlock Holmes
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THAT LIT, LIT LIFE (with global characteristics) 2 (of 14)
32 years. That’s how long it’s been since I last set foot on Australia’s east coast. Byron Bay was a soft landing after the long absence, because here was a surfer’s paradise, a gourmet’s paradise, a wine aficionado’s paradise . … Continue reading
Literary Boroughs #14: Montpelier, Vermont
The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage … Continue reading
A Machine that Twitters: Why I decided to let Paul Klee title my essays
For about four years, I lived within walking distance of the Menil Museum in Houston. It’s a free museum lodged in the Montrose neighborhood and it ate hours of my life. One season the museum had a giant mounting of … Continue reading
The Borderlands of Language: Using Italics for “Foreign” Words (Part I)
Junot Díaz once told me that he writes for his six best friends and the rest of the world. This was a few summers ago in a VONA fiction workshop in San Francisco. We had been discussing the meaty issue … Continue reading
Not Unlike…
Readings in World Literature Srikanth Reddy Omnidawn, 2012 42 pages $11.95 Editor’s note: P. Scott Stanfield holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches literature at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Recently, I challenged him to see how many references to other works … Continue reading
THAT LIT, LIT LIFE (with global characteristics) 1 (of 14)
When you’re around the world’s literati, you’re usually a little lit. A bit inebriated. Slightly slurred. Deliciously drunk. Oh, on words of course (Mais oui! What else?). Or if you’re running an international, low-residency MFA with Asian characteristics, you’re intoxicated … Continue reading
Literary Boroughs #13: Los Angeles, California
The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Boroughs
Tagged Andrea Martucci, California, Chris Daley, Los Angeles
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How I’m Spending my Summer
My wife told me to lead with the woman peeing. So I will. It was 5:30 last Sunday morning and I watched a woman pee herself. She announced she was doing it. Mumbling something about fascists, she said she hated … Continue reading
Bridging the Divide: Why I Brought My Mom to Bread Loaf
I didn’t grow up in what I would call a literary family. We delivered newspapers; we didn’t read them. We told stories constantly, but we never wrote them down. My mom is a housekeeper. All her life she has never … Continue reading
