Ploughshares is a literary print journal, featuring new, previously unpublished, poetry, fiction and occasionally personal essays/memoirs. Published in April, August, and December in quality paperback, each issue is guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores different and personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.

Considered one of the top literary journals in the country, Ploughshares publishes first or early works from many of today's most respected writers. Stories, poems, and essays, published for the first time in Ploughshares, are selected continuously for annual prize anthologies such as The Best American Poetry, The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.

Ploughshares was founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in the Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College, which hosts one of the best M.F.A. programs in creative writing in the country. Although Ploughshares is affiliated with Emerson College, it is not a student publication. Each month 1,200 submissions are received by Ploughshares from all over the United States, and the world, from authors ranging from best-selling household names to fresh new discoveries.

Tests and continuations include:

• Academy of American Poets
• AGNI Magazine / Boston University
• F&W Pubs
• Gettysburg Review
• Granta Magazine
• Kenyon Review (The)
• One Story
• Paris Review
• Poetry Magazine
• Poets & Writers
• Prairie Schooner / University of Nebraska
• Sun (The)
• Tin House