The Summer 2019 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and remains prescient in the digital age by providing readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”

As guest-editor Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in his introduction, “We need to work in environments with a diversity of people to make sure that the views of others who are different from us can check; likewise, we need literature written from a variety of perspectives and by a wide range of authors for the same reason—so that literature itself can demand that we see the world differently from how we normally might.” Featuring new work from Roxane Gay, Elizabeth Strout, James Hannaham, Laila Lalami, Patricia Engel, and many others, the work in this issue is connected by the medley of voices framing contemporary literature.