The Caller

by Ian Stansel

Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.” Available now are nine new Ploughshares Solos, longform stories and essays also collected in our annual fall issue. Edited by Editor-in-chief Ladette Randolph, the Fall 2019 collection of Solos features new longform work by Andrea Barrett, Kiley Reid, Lex Williford, and Tracy Daugherty, as well as Ian Stansel, Nancy Mays, Danielle Spencer, Christopher Peacock, and Susan Neville. The stories and essays in our longform issue are also available for individual purchase as e-books. Read "The Caller" by Ian "All week Max thinks about it. At night he falls asleep constructing the narrative and at work he spends the lunch hour in his car manufacturing details. When Sunday night rolls around and Nora has been put to bed and Julia is asleep or reading, he brings the radio station’s stream up on his computer. He’s in the den and the moon illuminates the snow falling outside. He tells himself he’s calling on a lark, a private prank, because he’s bored, because as he listens, there are lulls in the broadcast, awkward silences the show’s host struggles to fill, admirably, with recitations of stories she’s heard, with the importance of being in touch, of reaching out, of a voice, and he just wants to give her someone to talk to. And see, he just happens to have this story at the ready."

Kindle Edition

Published October 14, 2019

About the author

Ian Stansel is the author of the novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo and the short story collection Everybody's Irish, a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.

Ian holds an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston, where from 2010 to 2012 he served as the editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.

His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, Ecotone, Cincinnati Review, Memorious, Antioch Review, and others. His stories have been selected for inclusion in the 2012 and 2013 editions of the New Stories of the Midwest anthology series and shortlisted for Best American Short Stories.

His nonfiction writing has appeared on Salon and The Good Men Project, and he contributes monthly posts on a variety of literary subjects to the blog at Ploughshares.

Born in Chicago, and raised there and in northern California, he currently lives in Louisville with his wife, writer Sarah Anne Strickley, and their two daughters. He teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville.

He can be contacted at istansel [at] gmail [dot] com.