Anthologies

The Spring 2005 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by Martin Espada. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles. Guest-edited by noted poet Martin Espada, the Spring 2005 issue of Ploughshares contains prose and poetry by acclaimed authors including Karen Bender, Donald Hall, Yusef Komunyakaa, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, and Adrienne Rich. In his Introduction to the issue, Espada discusses the notion that poetry is dead in America: "Yet we are also a republic of poets, and a nation of storytellers…There are more good poems and stories being produced, and consumed — nay, devoured — in this country than ever before. If this is a funeral, then it's a jazz funeral." Full Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Martin Espada EDITOR PROFILE Cesar A. Salgado FICTION "Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Away," by Melissa Bank "Mother," by Quang Bao "Refund," by Karen E. Bender "Border," Alyson Hagy "The Great Cheese," by Luke Salisbury "Sleepwalk," by Valerie Sayers NONFICTION "Don't Rub Your Eyes," by Doug Anderson "Instead Of," by Ira Wood POETRY Jack Agueros Nin Andrews Naomi Ayala Daniel Berrigan Richard Blanco Michelle Boisseau Kevin Bowen Rafael Campo Cyrus Cassells Nan Cohen Robert Cording Robert Creeley Theordore Deppe Richard Garcia Stephen Gibson Aracelis Girmay Eugene Gloria Donald Hall Sam Hamill Nathalie Handal Myronn Hardy David Hernandez Bob Hicok Al Hudgins Colette Inez Yusef Komunyakaa Melissa Kwasny Adrian C. Louis Joshua McKinney David Mura John Murillo Joan Murray Pablo Neruda D. Nurkse Sharon Olds Ishle Yi Park Marge Piercy Dannye Romine Powell Leroy Quintana Adrienne Rich Eric Paul Shaffer R. T. Smith Gary Soto Gerald Stern Lidia Torres Lewis Turco Chase Twichell David Williams EDITORS' SHELF

The author of the celebrated and widely-acclaimed The Smoking Diaries, returns to print, with a tender, affecting, and of course funny account of his friendship with Alan Bates, written as he waits in Barbados for Harold Pinter to turn up.

The most popular question any pregnant woman is asked, aside from "When are you due?", has got to be "Are you having a girl or a boy?" When author Andrea Buchanan, already a mom to a little girl, was pregnant with her second child, she marveled at the response of friends and total strangers alike: "Boys are wonderful," "Boys are so much better than girls," "Boys love their mothers differently than girls." This constant refrain led her to explore the issue herself, with help from her fellow writers and moms, many of whom had had the same experience. The result is It's A Boy , a wide-ranging, often-humorous, and honest collection of essays about the experience of mothering boys. Taking on topics like aggression, parenting a teenage boy, and wishing for a daughter but getting a son, It's A Boy explores what it's like to mother sons and how that experience may be different, but no less satisfying, than mothering girls.

The Fall 2007 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by Andrea Barrett. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different and personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles. National Book Award winner Andrea Barrett (Ship Fever, The Voyage of the Narwhal) compiles this fiction issue of Ploughshares. In her Introduction, Barrett writes that, while editing the issue, and "reading so many complex and resonant stories, I chose those in which precise language restores what we otherwise, out of habit, fail to notice. Those that capture the mystery of metamorphosis; those in which characters are transformed by love, rage, grief, exile, politics, religion, art." The issue includes stories by acclaimed authors Bret Anthony Johnson ("Republican"), Ellen Litman ("The Trajectory of Frying Pans"), Paul Yoon ("And We Will Be Here"), and many others. INTRODUCTION Andrea Barrett EDITOR PROFILE Laura van den Berg FICTION "Reunion," by Karen E. Bender "When the Stars Begin to Fall," by Jill Gilbreth "Republican," by Bret Anthony Johnston "The Trajectory of Frying Pans," by Ellen Litman "Snake Oil," by Margaret McMullan "The Only Child," by Alix Ohlin "Everybody Serves Caesar," by Peter Orner "Light as a Feather," by Karen Shepard "Allegiance," by Joan Silber "News of the World," by Sarah Stone "Change of Address," by Christopher Tilghman "And We Will Be Here," by Paul Yoon POSTSCRIPTS Cohen Award Winners Victoria Chang and Joan Wickersham

GOLD IPPY (INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER) IN THE ANTHOLOGY CATEGORY In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2008 , Salman Rushdie called Ecotone one of a handful of journals on which “the health of the American short story depends.” Now at the close of an award-winning first decade, the magazine has established itself as a preeminent venue for original short fiction from both recognized and emerging writers, with more than twenty stories from sixteen issues reprinted or noted in the Best American, New Stories from the South, Pushcart, and PEN/O. Henry series. With the publication of this anthology, Lookout Books makes a permanent home for the vital work of Ecotone regular contributors Steve Almond, Rick Bass, Edith Pearlman, Ron Rash, Bill Roorbach, and Brad Watson, along with rising talents Lauren Groff, Ben Stroud, and Kevin Wilson, among others. In keeping with the magazine’s mission to reimagine place, the collection explores transitional zones, the spaces where we are most threatened and alive. From a city fallen silent to a doomed nineteenth-century ship, from a startling birth in the woods to the bog burial of an adored archaeologist, from the loop of hair in a drowned trader’s locket to the sanctity of pointy boots in a war zone, these stories make beautiful noise of our most fundamental human longings.

From Roxane Gay to Leslie Jamison, thirty brilliant writers share their timeless stories about the everlasting magic—and occasional misery—of living in the Big Apple, in a new edition of the classic anthology. In the revised edition of this classic collection, thirty writers share their own stories of loving and leaving New York, capturing the mesmerizing allure the city has always had for writers, poets, and wandering spirits. Their essays often begin as love stories do, with the passion of something newly discovered: the crush of subway crowds, the streets filled with manic energy, and the sudden, unblinking certainty that this is the only place on Earth where one can become exactly who she is meant to be. They also share the grief that comes like a gut-punch, when the grand metropolis loses its magic and the pressures of New York's frenetic life wear thin for even the most dedicated dwellers. As friends move away, rents soar, and love—still—remains just out of reach, each writer's goodbye is singular and universal, just like New York itself.

27 Views of Wilmington: The Port City in Prose & Poetry showcases the literary life of one of North Carolina’s most popular cities. Twenty-seven Wilmington authors and poets contribute their “views” to this local anthology, capturing the city, both present and past. They offer a broad and varied picture of the Port City—from its natural beauty to its influx of newcomers to its efforts to come to terms with its past racial violence to personal histories woven into the fabric of the community. National best-selling humorist Celia Rivenbark writes the introduction, and among the contributors are John Jeremiah Sullivan, Karen Bender, Jason Mott, Nan Graham, Rhonda Bellamy, Emily Louise Smith, Philip Gerard, Susan Block, Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, Bertha Boyd Todd, Michael White, and many others. “At the end of the day,” writes Rivenbark, “when the sunsets on the river or salt marsh attain a shade of pink-gold that only filmmakers whose Kickstarter campaigns have done very well seem to get just right, Wilmington’s s charm lies in its oddball blend of old and new, rural and urban, chic and casual.” 27 Views of Wilmington is the eighth and final book in Eno Publishers’s popular “27 Views” local literary series. The series has also published editions for Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Durham, Hillsborough, Asheville, Raleigh, and Greensboro. “We developed this series to both reflect the rich and diverse range of voices and perspectives in our communities and to impart an all-important sense of place,” comments Eno’s publisher Elizabeth Woodman. “We are fortunate to live in one of the most literary states in the U.S.”

With pathos and insight, each of the sixteen accomplished authors—among them Lynn Freed, Karen Bender, May-lee Chai, Gina Frangello, Cris Mazza, and Amina Gautier—featured in Love in the Time of Time’s Up skillfully explores the complexities of desire, intention, and what it means to be a woman in the era of Me Too and Time’s Up. From the fraught, sexually charged groves of academia and elevators of corporate America, to the imagined diary entries of Brett Kavanaugh and the tragicomic travails of a woman swiping right on Tinder in order to dispense advice to men whose profiles she finds lacking, these stories offer a blend of humor and horror, victory and heartache, righteous anger and rueful recrimination. It’s a collection that’s sure to leave a mark on readers’ minds—and earn a place in their hearts.