Ploughshares was founded in 1971 at a bar called the Plough and Stars in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley. It has been affiliated with Emerson College since 1989 and has grown into one of the most influential literary journals in America, publishing fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by both emerging and established writers.
What makes Ploughshares distinctive is its rotating guest-editor model: each issue is curated by a different writer, bringing fresh aesthetic sensibilities and unexpected juxtapositions to every edition. Past guest editors have included Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, Tobias Wolff, Jamaica Kincaid, and Sherman Alexie. The result is a journal that reinvents itself with every issue while maintaining a consistent commitment to literary excellence.
Over five decades, Ploughshares has published early work by writers who went on to define American literature, and its pages remain one of the most coveted venues for serious literary work. For readers and writers alike, it is proof that the literary journal — that most endangered of cultural institutions — remains indispensable.
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