The Fall 2005 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by Antonya Nelson. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different and personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.

Acclaimed short story and novel writer Antonya Nelson (Talking in Bed, Female Trouble) compiles this fiction issue of Ploughshares. In her Introduction, Nelson examines why, in an age when readers are supposedly interested in instant gratification, the short story is so feared in publishing circles. The reason, she writes, might be that the short story is "usually about an individual. And the shape of an individual's life is fixed: beginning, middle, end, which is to say: birth, life, death… But novels are usually about communities… and communities, unlike individuals, mostly survive."

Featuring authors like Frederick Busch ("The Bottom of the Glass"), Lily King ("Five Tuesdays in Winter"), and many others, this fiction issue is a room full of unforgettable individual lives.