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 "So Much Straw" by Tracy Daugherty:
"How did I come to God? As you see me. In these dark Kentucky woods. The hermitagereally no more than a square wooden hut with a desk, a single bed, and a hot plate (you seem surprised)this quiet retreat has been my cherished home these last four years, even as I have remained largely away from it, in my house in Fort Worth with my children and my wife."