## Background Ploughshares was founded in 1971 in the Plough & Stars bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley, initially as an outlet for a community of writers frustrated with the literary establishment of the time. It has been housed at Emerson College since 1989. The magazine is distinctive for its guest-editor model: each issue is curated by a different writer, who selects and shapes the contents around their own literary taste, which keeps the journal's sensibility rotating rather than fixed to a single editorial voice. Over its history Ploughshares has published early or notable work from writers such as Rick Moody, Sue Miller, and Ha Jin, and it remains one of the more prominent university-affiliated literary magazines in the US, alongside a fiction-focused annual imprint (Ploughshares Solos) and a scholarship/emerging-writers contest. ## Submissions - Open reading period: June 1 – November 15 (5:00pm EST). - Considers fiction, poetry, and nonfiction; Spring/Summer/Winter issues favor poems, short stories, and personal essays, while the Fall issue is dedicated to long-form fiction and nonfiction. - Prose: up to 6,500 words for the general reading period (up to 15,000 words for the Fall Longform issue). - Poetry: 3–5 pages for general submissions (6–10 pages for Fall Longform). - Upload as Word .docx or PDF only; one file per submission. - Cover letter preferred, with contact info and brief bio. - Simultaneous submissions welcome if disclosed, with prompt notice on acceptance elsewhere. Full guidelines: [pshares.org/submit/submit-writing](https://pshares.org/submit/submit-writing/) FAQ: [pshares.org/faq](https://pshares.org/faq/)