In 2012, we established Ploughshares Solos, a digital-first series for longer stories and essays, which is edited by Ploughshares Editor-in-Chief Ladette Randolph. New Solos are published regularly and are available for download on your Kindle, Nook, iPad, or Kobo.
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When the Prophet Gazed upon the Face of the Lord
“Already, as a boy, I was connected to the bitter ocean, and to murderers who believed that they could control the powers of nature.”
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Mortal Enemy
“This thing that had felt so threatening for so long, so jarring in its ragged constancy and intermittence, so irrational, so exhausting, sounded trivial and hysterical as we listened to ourselves trying to describe it.”
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The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs
“Perhaps it was the strange beauty of Callahan’s stride, or the ugliness of a humanmachine, or simply the incongruence of amputee and speed. It was something none of them had seen before.”
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The Mexican Detective
“No one knew her name, but all saw her face, and she liked this, being known only partially; the rest was a mystery, a blank slate on which she could write any future, any past.”
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Bush v. Gore
“He seemed to be investigating the very fabric of our democracy, considering its holes, aghast at the ragged seams he never knew existed.”
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Goodreads Warrior
“He shouldn't have to say what he'd been thinking, something as basic as: Native people can be great, Native people can be assholes. We cover the same bandwidth of behavior and character as any other group walking the earth. We are human.”
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A Procession of Beasts and Men
“America’s untamed northwest, the way it must have looked to those first settlers before civilization rolled in on the back of steam engines and broken promises.”
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The Émigré Engineer
“You couldn’t shoot people for sneering. You could, however, shoot them for burning down stores and bankrupting people. And in fact, if nobody else was going to do it for you, you had to.”
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What We Tried to Bury Grows Here
“Looking at the faces, they speak to her. Don’t think you’re different, they say. Trust us, they’ll hunt you to the world’s end. We, too, wanted to live a good life, but how can you when they keep you from living with dignity? Freedom, that is all that matters.”
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The Darling
“This was what I felt as I walked with Margaretta among the flowers. Her spirit all at once was elsewhere: it had stepped out of the woman in the tight-fitting purple dress, the woman with the close-cropped hair expensively dyed to match the color it had been when we’d first known each other. I was alone again.”
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