Ploughshares is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in Boston.[1]Ploughshares publishes issues four times a year, two of which are guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles. Guest editors have been the recipients of Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, and numerous other honors.[2]Ploughshares also publishes longform stories and essays, known as Ploughshares Solos (collected in the journal's fall issue and published separately as e-books), all of which are edited by the editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph,[3] and a literary blog, launched in 2009, which publishes critical and personal essays, interviews, and book reviews.[4]
In 1970 DeWitt Henry, a Harvard Ph.D. student, and Peter O'Malley, an Irish expatriate, decided to create a literary journal to fill a void they felt existed in the literary scene in Boston. Upon realizing that they and their supporters would never be able to agree on a specific editorial outlook for the magazine, the co-founders decided that the position of editor would be a rotating one. As a result, a majority of Ploughshares issues have been edited by various members of the community, giving the journal a unique and constantly changing voice.
The first issue was published in September 1971.[1]
In 1988, Ploughshares became affiliated with Emerson College. Author Don Lee subsequently became Editor-in-Chief, a role he held until 2007. Nine years after becoming affiliated with Emerson, Ploughshares received the first of three large grants from the Wallace–Reader's Digest Funds. Thereafter came rapid growth, state-of-the-art computers, a new design, and aggressive marketing campaigns.
In 2008, Ladette Randolph became Editor-in-Chief. The quality of the magazine's content remains the same, though its appearance has changed to reflect its firm place in today's literary world after launching the blog in 2009, Ploughshares launched its Solos series in 2012; the first.[7]
Ploughshares Solos Omnibus, collecting the first nine Solos in a print volume, was published in 2013. Also that year, all back issues of Ploughshares were made available in digital formats. In 2018, Ploughshares made available its robust archives via an online archive subscription, and converted the Ploughshares Solos Omnibus into a fall issue.[8]
Journal
Ploughshares publishes issues four times per year. Two of these issues—one, prose only; the other; a mix of poetry and prose—are guest-edited by prominent members of the literary community. The other two issues—one, a mix of poetry and prose; the other, longform prose, are edited by staff editors.[9]
Solos
The Ploughshares Solos Omnibus series collects the first five years of the journal's digitally published Solos in five print volumes.[10] Solos are now collected in the fall longform issue of Ploughshares.[12]
Blog
In 2009, Ploughshares became home to personal and critical essays, book reviews, and interviews in the form of a blog, which updates almost daily.[4]
Books
Ploughshares has also published nonfiction, fiction, and poetry books.[10]
1935: A Memoir by Sam Cornish
1935: A Memoir is a nonfiction work written by Sam Cornish and published by Ploughshares in December 1990. Sam Cornish's 1935 is a memoir of growing up black in Baltimore during the Depression and World War II.[11]
The Ploughshares Poetry Reader
The Ploughshares Poetry Reader celebrates the best of the poetry published in the journal's first 11 volumes, and reflects the editorial commitment to many of their writers. The book was edited by Joyce Peseroff and published in March 1987.[12]
Lie Down in Darkness: A Screenplay by Richard Yates
Lie Down in Darkness is a screenplay by Richard Yates and edited by William Styron and published by Ploughshares in January 1983. The screenplay follows the dysfunctional Loftis family as they reflect on their lives at the funeral of Peyton, the youngest member of the family.[13]
Guest Editors
Past guest editors of Ploughshares in alphabetical order.[2]
Between 1986 and 2010, Ploughshares honored the best short story and poem published in the journal via the Cohen Awards, wholly sponsored by the journal's longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists were nominated by staff editors, and the winners, each of whom received a cash prize of $600, were selected by Ploughshares' advisory editors. This award is not open for the submission of manuscripts, and has been replaced since 2011 by the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction.[14]
Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction
Inaugurated in 2011, the annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction honors a short story published in Ploughshares in the previous year (the Spring issue of the previous calendar year through the Winter issue of the current calendar year). The Prize is sponsored by member of the Ploughshares advisory board and longtime patron Alice Hoffman. The winner is selected by Ploughshares editors and receives a cash prize of $2,500. The announcement of the award, along with a short profile of the author, is printed in each year's Spring issue.[15]
Forthcoming in 2019, the annual Ashley Leigh Bourne Prize for Fiction honors a short story published in Ploughshares in the previous year (the Summer issue of the previous calendar year through the Spring issue of the current calendar year). The prize is sponsored by longtime patron Hunter C. Bourne III. The winner is selected by Ploughshares editors and receives a cash prize of $2,500. The announcement of the award, along with a short profile of the author, is printed in each year's Summer issue. This award is not open for the submission of manuscripts.[16]
Since 1991, the John C. Zacharis First Book Award has honored the best first book published by an author who has already published work in Ploughshares. The $1,500 award, which is named after Emerson College's former president, is judged by Ploughshares editors. The announcement of the award, along with a short profile of the author, is printed in each year's Winter issue.[17]
In the spirit of the journal's founding mission, the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest recognizes work by an emerging writer in each of three genres: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. One winner in each genre per year receives $2,000, publication in the literary journal, and a conversation with a literary agent. Ploughshares consider authors “emerging” if they haven't published or self-published a book.
Many of past contributors to Ploughshares have received significant accolades. Since the journal's founding in 1971, stories, poems, and essays from Ploughshares have appeared over 150 times in the following award series anthologies: The Best American Poetry, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. Ploughshares has had more selections in The Best American Short Stories than any other literary journal in the past ten years. In the past several years, it has had more stories published in The Pushcart Prize anthology than any other publication, and the journal continues to be considered one of the most prestigious in the country.
In popular culture
One of the protagonists in Stephen King's novel Under the Dome is said to have recently guest-edited an issue of Ploughshares.[18]
Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.
Marilyn Hacker is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English emerita at the City College of New York.
The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to submit up to six works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976. It is supported and staffed by volunteers.
Kevin Young is an American poet and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture since 2021. Author of 11 books and editor of eight others, Young previously served as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a finalist for the National Book Award for his 2003 collection Jelly Roll: A Blues, Young was Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and curator of Emory's Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. In March 2017, Young was named poetry editor of The New Yorker.
Don Lee is an American novelist, fiction writer, literary journal editor, and creative writing professor.
Jean Valentine was an American poet and the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.
Ander Monson is an American novelist, poet, and nonfiction writer.
Rodney T. Smith is an American poet, fiction writer, and editor. The author of twelve poetry collections and a collection of short fiction, Smith is the editor of Shenandoah, a prestigious literary journal published by Washington and Lee University. His poetry and stories are identified with Southern literature and have been published in magazines and literary journals such as The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, and The Kenyon Review.
Autumn House Press is an independent, non-profit literary publishing company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
Stephen Patrick Glanvill Henighan is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, journalist, translator and academic.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Patrick Phillips is an American poet, writer, and professor. He teaches writing and literature at Stanford University, and is a Carnegie Foundation Fellow and a fellow of the Cullman Center for Writers at the New York Public Library. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Copenhagen, and previously taught writing and literature at Drew University. He grew up in Georgia and now lives in San Francisco.
Victoria Chang is an American poet, writer, editor, and critic.
Anthony V. Ardizzone is an American novelist, short story writer, and editor.
Ladette Randolph is an American author and editor.
The Common is an American nonprofit literary magazine founded in Amherst, Massachusetts by current Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker. The magazine, which has been based at Amherst College since 2011, publishes issues of stories, poems, essays, and images biannually. The magazine focuses its efforts on the motif of "a modern sense of place," and works to give the underrepresented artistic voices a literary space.
Christine Sneed is an American author — the novels Little Known Facts (2013), Paris, He Said (2015), and Please Be Advised (2022), and the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry (2010), The Virginity of Famous Men (2016), and Direct Sunlight (2023) — as well as a graduate-level fiction professor at Northwestern University who also teaches in Regis University's low-residency MFA program. She is the recipient of the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award, the John C. Zacharis First Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the 2009 AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, and the Chicago Writers' Association Book of the Year Award in both 2011 and 2017.
Billy O'Callaghan is an Irish short fiction writer and novelist. He is best known for his short-story collection The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, which was awarded the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for the short story in 2013 and his widely-translated novel My Coney Island Baby, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award.
Susan Elmslie is a Canadian poet and English professor at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec.
Jean Thompson is an American novelist, short story writer, and teacher of creative writing. She lives in Urbana, Illinois, where she has spent much of her career, and is a professor emerita at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, having also taught at San Francisco State University, Reed College, and Northwestern University.
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