Balsa and Tissue Paper

Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares "the Triton among minnows."

Available now are nine new Ploughshares Solos, longform stories and essays also collected in our annual fall issue. Edited by Editor-in-chief Ladette Randolph, the Fall 2019 collection of Solos features new longform work by Andrea Barrett, Kiley Reid, Lex Williford, and Tracy Daugherty, as well as Ian Stansel, Nancy Mays, Danielle Spencer, Christopher Peacock, and Susan Neville. The stories and essays in our longform issue are also available for individual purchase as e-books.

Read "Balsa and Tissue Paper" by Lex Williford:

"Somehow, I understood, even as a kid, that I'd never learn the truth about my father directly, a man who hid the truth from himself so thoroughly, the hinges of his mind almost always welded shut but, lubricated by drink, sometimes swinging open as he exposed, then tried to protect himself from, his wounds like a cornered porcupine, its back to me, hissing, its needles extended, erect and ready to let fly."

Dettagli