Ploughshares

Editors and guest editors

In the summer, I often give you just one journal at a time, often a university one where the editors are open to submissions June through August. I like to choose a popular journal, if I’m giving you one, a publication that most writers desire. For the start of this summer, it’s Ploughshares, a longstanding, high quality publication from Emerson College that recently underwent a change of editors. Change of the base editors, that is, for it has always had the policy of employing guest editors, too. Even if an issue is guest edited, half of the work chosen comes from submissions, and even if a judge chooses an emerging writer, they are selecting from a bunch screened by the staff editors and their readers.

Founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O’Malley, and moved to Emerson College in 1989, Ploughshares is on its fourth masthead refresh: Jenny Molberg as editor-in-chief & poetry editor, Rachel Dillon, managing editor, Paul Harding, fiction editor, and Hanif Abdurraqib as the first …