Uncategorized Archive
Raising ’em right: Fiction & Parenthood
Within the next few weeks, I’ll be officially responsible for introducing another human being to a sense of ethics—of how to be in this world. Granted, she and I will be initially concerned with a few other things, but the time will come when we will talk about right
Writers: Go and Sin Some More.
By the time you read this, I’ll be in London, having just given a paper on my (very erotic) manipulations of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry. (More on that in a minute.) Meanwhile, in my songwriter life, I’m preparing to record some songs that leap beyond the safe bounds of
Writing Lessons: Miranda K. Pennington
In our Writing Lessons series, writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Miranda K. Pennington, a student in the MFA program at Columbia University. You can follow Miranda @MirandaKPinNYC. —Andrew Ladd, Blog Editor Whenever I’m in search
Book vs Movie: World War Z (A Ploughshares Playlist)
First things first: Did you all know that Max Brooks, author of World War Z (basis for the newly released movie of the same title), is Mel Brooks’s son? Neither did I. Moving on. I’ll be honest. I’m not so into the recent vampire craze. I can’t get into
Roundup: Reading it By Ear
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 and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. We’ve had a few posts
The Coffeeshop You Meet in Heaven
The New York Times blog recently highlighted a website called Coffitivity that plays ambient coffee shop noise on an endless loop to help you work more productively from home. I can only assume they previously deduced, through the same vigorous scientific trials I myself have undertaken, that Barista Noise
From the Slush Pile: Readers Speak
If there was a magic pill—you know lose weight, no exercise—to beat the slush pile and warm the hearts of editors straight to publication, I’d eat it and then dole it out to all of you. But we all know you have to do the work, show up every
The Crush Problem
In my last post, I wrote about the Lonesome Dove Problem—i.e., my lifelong struggle to find a girthy novel as totally absorbing as Larry McMurtry’s masterpiece—and attempted to identify some common denominators shared by Lonesome Dove and a few other totally absorbing novels, so that I might be better
Episodia 1.8: Bromantics
Call it phileo, call it friendship, call it brotherly love—any way you slice it, I’m a sucker for a good bromance. After my most recent post (which dipped a toe into the treacherous territory of love triangles), I started thinking about the other kinds of love available for us
Mother-Reader
In retrospect, I did everything wrong when I opened Emma Donoghue’s excellent story collection Astray. I didn’t check the author notes explaining the origins of each piece. I didn’t note the time: midnight. It didn’t occur to me that in a collection chronicling historical moments, there might be violence,