The Winter 2015-16 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, with the Winter issue staff-edited.The stories, poems, and essays that comprise this staff-edited issue of Ploughshares are diverse and timely. Visit a South African laundromat in Laurie Baker’s short story, Here I Am, Laughing with Boers;...

The mesmerizing bestseller that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock—A New York Times Ten Best Book of the YearSpecial Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit. At the center of the novel is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic know...

From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction PrizeA Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How shou...

"Twenty masterfully crafted short stories" by T.C. Boyle, Emma Cline, Mary Gaitskill, and more: "Outstanding and well worth the read." — Booklist (starred review)"To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time," recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. "They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and ob...

“Beautiful. The human condition is on full display in these glimpses of our essential connectedness. Perfect for our times.”—Dani Shapiro, author of InheritanceSixty-five extraordinary writers grapple with this mystery: How can an ephemeral encounter with a stranger leave such an eternal mark?When Colleen Kinder put out a call for authors to write a letter to a stranger about an unforgettable encounter, she opened the floodgates. Th...

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

A hilarious collection from McSweeney's that "achieves the sensation of being hit by a hip, humorous train.... Breaks mold after mold in hilarious fashion" (The New York Times).Now more than ever, Americans are troubled by questions. As sweaty modernity thrusts itself upon us, the veil of ignorance that cloaked our nation hangs in tatters, tattered tatters. Our "funny bones" are neither fun nor bony. Glum is the new giddy, and the old giddy wasn't too gidd...

How much of the human experience can fit into 750 words? A lot, it turns out. Since its founding in 1997, Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction has published hundreds of brief nonfiction essays by writers around the world, each within that strict word count. Over the past 20 years, Brevity has become one of the longest-running and most popular online literary publications, a journal readers regularly return to for insightful essays from skilled writers at ever...

A selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang, hand-selected by celebrated editor and anthologist John FreemanIn the past fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of styles have brought this unique genre a thrilling burst of energy. The Pengui...

A collection of essays about the joys and struggles of being alone by 22 literary writers including: Lev Grossman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lena Dunham, Jesmyn Ward, Yiyun Li, and Anthony DoerrIf you’re feeling lonely or if you’ve ever felt unseen, if you’re emboldened by solitude or secretly longing for it: Welcome to The Lonely Stories. This cathartic collection of essays illuminates an experience that so few of us openly discuss. Some stories are heartbreaking, s...

The Best American Series®First, Best, and Best-SellingThe Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by a leading writer in the field, making the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 includesDaniel Alarcón, Clare Beams, Sloane Crosley, Anthony Doerr, Neil Gaiman, Mo...

A dazzling new anthology of the very best very short fiction from around the world.What is a flash fiction called in other countries? In Latin America it is a micro, in Denmark kortprosa, in Bulgaria mikro razkaz. These short shorts, usually no more than 750 words, range from linear narratives to the more unusual: stories based on mathematical forms, a paragraph-length novel, a scientific report on volcanic fireflies that proliferate in n...