Ploughshares Spring 1998 : Stories and Poems

by Stuart Dybek (Editor), Jane Hirshfield (Editor)

Contributors to this issue include: Kim Addonizio, Sandra Alcosser, Nin Andrews, David Baker, Bruce Beasley, Dan Bellm, Nathaniel Bellows, Molly Bendall, Karen Benke, Bruce Bond, David Bottoms, Joel Brouwer, Pam Crow, Michael Cuddihy, Chard deNiord, Sharon Dolin, Stephen Dunn, Laura Fargas, Patricia Fargnoli, Herman Fong, Kenny Fries, Ted Genoways, Debora Greger, Sam Hamill, Jeffrey Harrison, A. Hemon, Colette Inez, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Christina Lanzl, Dorianne Laux, William Logan, William Lychack, Fred Marchant, Morton Marcus, Peter Marcus, Stefanie Marlis, Valerie Martin, Gwyn McVay, Joseph Millar, Carol Muske, Joyce Carol Oates, Suzanne Paola, Linda Pastan, Donald Platt, Liz Rosenberg, Kay Ryan, Gerald Shapiro, Peter Jay Shippy, Kelly Simon, Virgil Suarez, Eve Sutton, David Wagoner, David Foster Wallace, Renée Weiss, Theodore Weiss, Robert Wrigley, Al Young

225 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 1998

About the author

Stuart Dybek has published three short story collections: Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, and I Sailed With Magellan; and two volumes of poetry: Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink. He has been anthologized frequently and regularly appears in magazines such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine and the Paris Review.

He has received numerous awards, including: a 1998 Lannan Award; the 1995 PEN/Bernard Malamud Prize "for distinctive achievement in the short story"; an Academy Institute Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994; a Guggenheim Fellowship; two fellowships from the NEA; a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center; and a Whiting Writers Award. He has also received four O. Henry Prizes, including an O. Henry first prize for his story, "Hot Ice." Dybek's story, "Blight," was awarded the Nelson Algren Prize and his collection, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, which was nominated for the National Book Critics' Circle Award, received the 1981 Prize for Fiction from the Society of Midland Authors and the Cliff Dwellers Award from the Friends of Literature.

Dybek grew up on Chicago’s South Side in a Polish-American neighborhood called Pilsen or Little Village, which is also the main setting for his fiction. He received an M.A. in Literature from Loyola University in Chicago and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He teaches at Western Michigan University when he is not in Chicago.