Milk-Producing, Duck-Billed, and Venomous: The Reanimation Library

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It’s a digital age, but we’re still mad for paper! Even as readers embrace the connectivity and convenience offered by iPads and Kindles, there are still many good reasons to celebrate a book’s physicality. In Ploughshares’ Book Arts series, we’ll be looking at some of the artists, curators, and

Episodia 1.5: Mad Men’s Tell-Tale Heart

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For six seasons now, television viewers have been transfixed by advertising phenom Don Draper’s troubled smolder as he winds his way through Manhattan’s boardrooms, bedrooms, and bars. Each episode is loaded with literary jewels for writers to fawn over: the elegant use of space (that office elevator really knows

Riding In Cars With Words

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On long car rides with my father, you could count on hearing three questions: What kind of cow is that? What kind of roof is that? Is the moon waxing or waning? My answers were always as follows: a Holstein, a mansard, and waxing? (I never did work out which was which.)

Community and Self in the Suburbs

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Novelists have been using the suburbs as tender meat for skewering for nearly a century now. Longer, perhaps, if you consider a book like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the 1899 novel where we see most of the feelings of desperation and imprisonment that will grow, both in the real

The Books We Teach #2: Interview with Roxane Gay

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The Books We Teach series will feature primary, secondary, and post-secondary educators and their thoughts about literature in the face of an evolving classroom. Posts will highlight literary innovations in teaching, contemporary literature’s place in pedagogy, and the books that writers teach. In the spirit of educational dynamism, we

Fantasy Blog Draft – Round 3 – Wildcard Picks!

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[Editor’s note: If your March Madness bracket got busted, never fear! You can now redeem yourself with our Fantasy Blog Draft Bracket! Starting June 11, our completed teams will be facing off against each other, with reader votes on Facebook determining the winners. Until then, you can pick your

Writers and Their Pets: Ladette Randolph

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My husband Noel and I rescued Sally, our 110 pound Leonburger, from a shelter in Lincoln, Nebraska a little over ten years ago. She was about a year old when we found her. At the time, we had just moved out of Lincoln to an old farmhouse on twenty

Do Characters Dream of Left-Justified Sheep? (Part Two)

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How can you avoid bad dream-writing? Part One of this post appeared on Monday. All right, let’s talk about the good things dreams can do for your writing process. Let’s have some nice dreams. Real-ize Your Dream  Have you ever used a dream as inspiration for writing? George Saunders did this

Roundup: The End—Putting Your Story to Bed

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In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. This week we have posts on story endings. So you’ve

Do Characters Dream of Left-Justified Sheep? (Part One)

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I had the strangest dream about you last night, my husband said. You were surrounded by wood. There were wood walls, floors. All this old furniture everywhere. Of course, a wife is keenly interested in her husband’s dreams, especially if she’s the star. But what struck me about my