Monthly Archive:: November 2012
Roundup: Thanks, Food, and Family
As we look forward to updating the Ploughshares blog for the new year, we’re also looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. Our roundups explore the archives and gather past posts around a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. This week
Orthodoxy, Humor, and the Bookstore of Your Dreams: An Interview with Michael Lowenthal
To open any of Michael Lowenthal’s novels is to be struck by the visceral power of his images. From a woman’s “depthless smile” to a man with a belly like a rucksack, from flags snapping in the wind at a WWI parade to a description of an adolescent boy’s
Literary Boroughs #28: San Francisco and North Bay (Part Two)
[Read part one of this post here.] Where to get published: Though the writer-to-everyday citizen ratio is kind of out of control in the Bay Area (meaning: heaps of competition for space in local publications), there are still plenty of opportunities for publication in local journals and magazines. McSweeney’s has
THAT LIT, LIT LIFE (with global characteristics) 11 (of 14)
So this past week that lit, lit life took me first to Bangkok and then to Kyoto, two cities where I’m decidedly “foreign” even though I am mistaken for “local.” But first a pause to recall Han Suyin who died at the age of 96. Never heard of her?
Literary Boroughs #28: San Francisco and North Bay (Part One)
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 our readers to contribute in the comment section. The
Interview with Chad Simpson, Author of Tell Everyone I said Hi
Chad Simpson was raised in Monmouth, Illinois, and Logansport, Indiana. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Esquire, American Short Fiction, The Sun, and many other print and online publications. He is the recipient of a fellowship in prose from the Illinois Arts Council and scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’
Surrealist Writing Rule with Comic Addendum
In my last couple of years at the University of Houston, I twice got the chance to teach an undergraduate creative writing class with Antonya Nelson. The students were all hand-picked and their talents ran over them like… You know those scenes where the horses on a stage coach
Roundup: Writing advice, tips, and lists
As we look forward to updating the Ploughshares blog for the new year, we’re also looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. Our roundups explore the archives and gather past posts around a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. This week
Blurbese: Direct Quotations
If you happened to read more than one review of J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy last month, you’ll never look at a condom the same way again. That’s because of a single line from the book, which the New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, the Daily Beast, and Library
Literary Boroughs #27: Ann Arbor, Michigan
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 our readers to contribute in the comment section. The