The Winter 2016-17 issue of Ploughshares. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Two out of each year's three issues are guest-edited by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles; the Winter issue is staff-edited.This staff edited issue of Ploughshares features a vibrant collection of essays, poems, and short stories. Whether it’s through poetry like Daniel Lawless’s poem “The Old Masters,” or short stories like Kat...

The Spring 2021 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and remains prescient in the digital age by providing readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”As guest-editor Laura van den Berg writes in her introduction, “At its core, literatu...

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more.Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970...

**LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRYWINNER OF THE A. POULIN, JR. POETRY PRIZEA LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2017 SELECTION: POETRY & LITERATUREON NPR BOOKS'S LIST OF "POETRY TO PAY ATTENTION TO: 2017'S BEST VERSE"A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2017 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE SELECTION**In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family—the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cos...

A clear voice of her generation, Sierra DeMulder’s writing offers a gritty, sincere perspective on the subtle joys and modern pains of living. Her debut collection The Bones Below delicately carries the reader to a place of brutal, beautiful honesty. DeMulder’s personal revelations complete a touching portrait of the young artist and her fearless exploration of the human experience, bare in its rawest and most tender forms. DeMulder possesses the most important quality a young writer can h...

The best of short literary memoirs, essays, and reflections, many of which were written expressly for this collection. Also availableThe late Judith Kitchen, editor of the perennially popular anthologies Short Takes, In Short, and In Brief, was greatly influential in recognizing and establishing flash creative nonfiction as a form in its own right. In Brief Encounters, she and writer/editor/actor Dinah Lenney expand this vibrant field wit...

Waveform celebrates the role of women essayists in contemporary literature. Historically, women have been instrumental in moving the essay to center stage, and Waveform continues this rich tradition, further expanding the dynamic genre’s boundaries and testing its edges. With thirty essays by thirty distinguished and diverse women writers, this carefully constructed anthology incorporates works ranging from the traditional to the experimental.Waveform champions th...

The Best American Poetry 1995 once again highlights the dazzling spectrum of style and subject matter to be found in the art today. Guest editor Richard Howard's accent is on discovery and surprise, and he has gleaned the most inventive and searching writing from a wide variety of literary journals. The themes and imagery here are indisputably "American," as our best poets continue to mine personal as well as communal experience for their work. Now in its eighth year, this series ...

This debut collection by Cave Canem fellow Geffrey Davis burrows under the surface of gender, addiction, recovery, clumsy love, bitterness, and faith. The tones explored—tender, comic, wry, tragic—interrogate male subjectivity and privilege, as they examine their "embarrassed desires" for familial connection, sexual love, compassion, and repair. Revising the Storm also speaks to the sons and daughters affected by the drug/crack epidemic of the '80s and addresses issues of masculin...

This groundbreaking anthology offers a broad and representative introduction to some of the most exciting, fresh voices on the contemporary poetry landscape by gathering together generous selections from the work of 85 younger American poets.The poets selected were born after 1960, published their first book within the last 10 years, and have no more than three books published. Some are the recipients of numerous awards, while others, who are making their first appearance, are quic...

What is important is to avoidthe time allotted for disavowelsas the livid woundleaves a trace leaves an abscesstakes its contraction for those cloudsthat dip thunder & vanishlike rose leaves in closed jars.Age approaches, slowly. But it cannotcrystal bone into thin air.The small hours open their wounds for me.This is a woman's confession:I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me.

Lambda Literary Award-winning editor Richard Canning brings together all new work by Edmund White, Dale Peck, James McCourt, Andrew Holleran, and others.