Ploughshares :: NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines
Ploughshares
About Ploughshares: Published in April, August, and December in quality paperback, each issue is guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
Contact Information:
Emerson College
120 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: (617) 824-3757
Email: pshares[at]pshares[dot]org
Web: www.pshares.org
Submission/Subscription Information:
Genres: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, novellas
Simultaneous submissions: yes Email submissions: no Online submissions: yes (see website) Reading period: 6/1-1/15 Response time: approximately 2-4 months Payment: yes (see website) Contests: yes (see website) ISSN: 0048-4474 Founded: 1971 Issues per year: 3 Distributors: Ubiquity, Source Interlink Copy price: $14 Average pages: 220 Sample price: $7 (see website for shipping) Subscription (Ind/Inst) 1 year: $30 (see website for non-US)
Publisher's description: Ploughshares was founded in 1971 in the Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College, which hosts one of the best M.F.A. programs in creative writing in the country. Most issues are guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
Guest editors of Ploughshares have included Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Sherman Alexie, Alice Hoffman, Lorrie Moore, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Elizabeth Strout. Many of today’s most respected writers had their first or early work published in Ploughshares, and pieces first published in Ploughshares are regularly recognized by Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Award.
Ploughshares remains committed to recognizing and publishing emerging writers. The Emerging Writer’s Contest was started in 2011 and awards $3,000 annually to an emerging poet, fiction, and nonfiction writer. In addition to the quarterly journal, Ploughshares publishes digital-only single stories called Ploughshares Solos.
Recent issues:
The poet Major Jackson (Holding Company) compiles this eclectic Spring 2013 issue, featuring poetry by writers like Martín Espada, Tony Hoagland, Laura Kasischke, Sharon Olds, Carl Phillips, and Tracy K. Smith. There is also a variety of fiction, from the story of a high school girl in the South and her relationship with a white teacher (“What Happens Next,” by Emily Bernard) to a New York doorman dying of cancer (“The Rubber Game,” by Sherri Phillips). The issue also features a Plan B essay by Floyd Skloot (“The Great Dream”), and an appreciation of the British writer Barbara Pym.
Ploughshares editor-in-chief Ladette Randolph and poetry editor John Skoyles compile this Winter 2012/2013 issue, which features the work of several distinguished writers as well as the winners of the Emerging Writer’s Contest. The issue features fiction about the Bei Piao, the aimless twenty-somethings who wander modern Beijing (“Days of Being Mild,” by Xuan Juliana Wang), the legacy of anti-Semitism in Belgium (“Strawberries,” by Karl Taro Greenfeld), an essay about a painful high school production of The Miracle Worker (“Heather, 1984,” by Kate Flaherty), and poetry by Carl Dennis, Barbara Hamby, Ellen Bass, Afaa Michael Weaver, and many more.
Award-winning memoirist and author Patricia Hampl compiles this all-essay issue [Fall 2012] of Ploughshares. Showcasing the diversity and range of nonfiction in English, the issue contains family memoir (“My Mother’s Story,” by Xu Xi), travel writing (“What the Desert Said,” by Kimberly Meyer), a graphic essay by the cartoonist L. K. Hanson (from “The Story of My Hand”), and everything from science writing to reflections on faith. Featuring acclaimed authors like Phillip Lopate, Charles Baxter, and Dani Shapiro, the issue also contains Hampl’s thoughts on the art of nonfiction and the American love for the first person voice.
last updated 05/06/2013