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 we’re getting seasonal with posts on thanks, food, and family dysfunction.

Thursday marks what is possibly my favorite holiday of the year: Thanksgiving.  What can be better than a day where we all get together with family and friends to cook, bicker, watch football, and stuff ourselves?  Also pie.  What can be better than pie?  (Stay tuned for a Ploughshares staff roundup on food literature later this week.)  To get in the Thanksgiving spirit, we’ve collected posts this week on gratitude, food, family, and friends.

• Aimee Nezhukumatathil makes lists of what she’s thankful for in “Of Grape Gum and Glass Pens: Practicing Gratitude.”

• Greg Schutz takes the time to say “Thank you” to a professor, Raymond Carver, and Mr. Venturini.  

• Thanksgiving isn’t just about giving thanks, there’s also the food.  Peter Kline explores why poets are often good cooks in “Culinary Art.”

• Gather family members and close friends into one house, and you’ve got a ticking emotional time-bomb.  If you need an escape, Ploughshares staff is here to help with “Family Dysfunction: Some Tense Literature for Thanksgiving (Plus a Playlist).”

• On the subject of family, Aimee Nezhukumatathil asks “Who Is Your Writing Family?”

• If, after all the family time and turkey, you need a laugh, check out the Poultry Slams on This American Life.

• Thanksgiving also means Black Friday.  In preparation we are happy to bring you “Your Literary Holiday Gift Guide” and Ploughshares’ ever popular gift subscription deal!

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