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 "George Washington's Teeth" by Kiley Reid:
"Claire remembered sitting between her mother's knees on a green plastic stool and crying this way: breathy and brutal and practically wild. Her mother refused to relax her hair but she also refused to learn to comb through it without causing Claire intense pain, the breakage of of Claire's hair, and the snap of some combs. That all changed when Claire discovered braids, and that she could have this pain only five times a year. In her third year of college, Claire decided five times was too much. When she returned home for Christmas with her dark brown hair in skinny-plaited locks, her mother looked at her and said, 'Let's just hope you can get a job with those things.'"
