Barbara Lock

Books are spoken for!

Looking to build your physical library? Willing to give these 5 literary novels to a good home. I'll cover shipping to a mutual in contiguous US.

This is an incredible story.

It’s a Sunday afternoon in the dead center of the year. Life barrels along. Best of times, worst of times, y’all know the score.

Please consider checking out my two new books this year: Boxcutters has been out in the world for two months and Feast is but a month away!

Celebrate Summerween with Ploughshares! Join us at 6pm on July 16th at Trident Booksellers in Boston, MA, for the launch of our sinister Summer 2025 issue, guest-edited by Victor LaValle and filled with werewolves, monsters, and more. Register here: https://pshr.us/sinistersummerlaunch

Great news, Suzy!

My first book will be out May 2026 🖤

At church today we sang Get Together by The Youngbloods.

You know how it goes:

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

The cat is meowing at ghosts again.

Our sinister Summer 2025 issue is out now! Guest-edited by Victor LaValle, this issue features prose by Helen Phillips, Deesha Philyaw, S. A. Cosby, Joanna Pearson, Carolyn Ferrell, and more. Grab your copy today: https://pshr.us/summer25

We are pleased to present Ramona Ausubel with the annual Ashley Leigh Bourne Prize for Fiction for her story, “Perfect Numbers,” published in the Summer 2024 issue. Read the full announcement and a profile in our Summer 2025 issue: https://pshr.us/summer25

Ploughshares Summer 2025 is Sinister in the best way!

Reading @nadiabulkin.bsky.social in @pshares.bsky.social edited by @victorlavalle.bsky.social : "She has never had therapy. Doctors take five minutes, and exorcisms take five days, and she figures this is a good compromise."

Will you be in Boston next Wednesday? Come out to hear us read from Sinister Summer, edited by @victorlavalle.bsky.social.

Thanks, Dan!

Thank you, Tessa!

@variantlit.bsky.social’s own @barbaralockmd.bsky.social Her story’s sunlit-subtle menace will have you looking over your shoulder in a literary way!

Thanks, John!! I'm so grateful for your enthusiasm and for publishing "The Story of Girls" in Cold Signal, one of my best and favorite stories so far!

Thanks, Suzy! The whole issue is fire.

Will you be in Boston next Wednesday? Come out to hear us read from Sinister Summer, edited by @victorlavalle.bsky.social.

What's in the box?

What an honor! Thanks @variantlit.bsky.social for seeing something in this story!

Have you read our newest issue yet?!?

The masterful narrative and metaphoric content of Vittorio Ottaviani's work takes my breath away.

Celebrating new work from one of our poetry readers!

Thank you, Tessa!

Thrilled to share the cover of #MOTEL, the anthology I'm editing for @cowboyjamboree.bsky.social

Just referred a learner to this piece today after she said she didn’t want to write surreal nonfiction. 🤔

33: The men in the plane perceived that the raid had been successful, but they thought of the people in the city and they were not perfectly happy. Some felt they had done wrong. But in any case they had obeyed orders. “It was war.” 34: Over the radio went the code message that the bomb had been successful: “Visible effects greater than Trinity … Proceeding to Papacy.” Papacy was the code name for Tinian. 35: It took a little while for the rest of Japan to find out what had happened to Hiroshima. Papers were forbidden to publish any news of the new bomb. A four line item said that Hiroshima had been hit by incendiary bombs and added: “It seems that some damage was caused to the city and its vicinity.” 36: Then the military governor of the Prefecture of Hiroshima issued a proclamation full of martial spirit. To all the people without hands, without feet, with their faces falling off, with their intestines hanging out, with their whole bodies full of radiation, he declared: “We must n

Reading Thomas Merton's anti-poem, "Original Child Bomb."

Join me @writesloud.bsky.social and friends for a moment of peace and poetry this Friday. All donations are for humanitarian aid via Doctors without Borders.

PoetsforPeace.Eventbrite.com

Have a new flash in @havehashad.com today about Slappy, the dummy from the Goosebumps books. Check it out.

Link to the story: www.havehashad.com