"Renders with grace and tenderness the often unconscious need and yearning a young person has for an authentic teacher... a beautiful and deeply moving memoir." Andre Dubus IIIIn his undergraduate years, Joseph Hurka's mentor was the writer Andre Dubus, a great, large spirit of a man, today considered a twentieth-century master of the short story. Dubus opened new artistic doors for the young Hurka; he sent his student on to the Writers' Workshop at the University ...

Over one September night on their small suburban street, the neighbors of Joseph Hurka's novel Before connect. Whether they're strangers, acquaintances, or ultimately closest allies, the familiar residents of a street in Hurka's Cambridge, Massachusetts, fascinate and terrify, and Hurka's debut novel offers us the depths of their strange and secret lives.Seventy-three-year-old Jiri Posselt and his wife, Anna, are survivors of the Nazi horror in Czechoslovakia; they have be...

The Summer 2017 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.Distinguished writer Stewart O’Nan guest-edits this issue. As O’Nan writes in his introduction, “I want to feel moral confusion, because nothing in this world is simple. As a writer reading, I also admire the ...

Over the past twenty years, the debate between neutrality and perfectionism has been at the center of political philosophy. Now Perfectionism and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal Theory brings together classic papers and new ideas on both sides of the discussion. Editors George Klosko and Steven Wall provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible to everyone inter...