Transcendence and Telemetry: Brandon Allen on Reckonings and Writing “Jordan”
Brandon Allen speaks with Pleiades about his Spring 2025 short story and about “trying to depict the truth of both acolyte and doubter with compassion and precision, without sacrificing the trepidation or beauty of either.”
Jordan
“It works backward, my conversion: first I repent at the pine altar, then I sin.”
BLACK DOLLS
Folio in Conversation with the Collection of Deborah Neff
Edited by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
Introduction by Courtenay M. Kantanka
featuring new work by Courtenay M. Kantanka, Jessica L. Barbee, Anne Marie Ward, Alex Tretbar, Daniela Barzallo, Miranda Reinberg, Haley Herzberg, Bayleigh Williams, Amanda Trout, and Mary Sauer
Fall 2025–Spring 2026
Pleiades 45.2 + 46.1 is the double issue for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. This double issue features two special folios: "Missouri Writers" and "Black Dolls: In Conversation with The Collection Of Deborah Neff." Missouri Writers" was edited by Jennifer Maritza McCauley,...
Our latest issue
Fall 2025–Spring 2026
Pleiades 45.2 + 46.1 is the double issue for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. This double issue features two special folios: “Missouri Writers” and “Black Dolls: In Conversation with The Collection Of Deborah Neff.”
News
Poetry
Fiction
Essays
Reviews
Interviews
Announcing the 2026 Prufer Poetry Prize, judged by Sadie Dupuis!
Submissions are open from October 1 through October 31 at 11:59 PM CST. Writers may submit 1–3 poems per entry fee. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Pleiades: Literature in Context.
Winner of the 2025 Kinder/Crump Prize: “Maestro, Hold On”
Announcing the winner of the 2025 Kinder/Crump Prize: “Maestro, Hold On” by daniel barrios
“Heat Wave” and “Emerging”
Heat WaveThe summer my oldest daughter is born is a blaze,roaring up from the Sahara to blanket all of Europe.Roads buckle from the boil. Bascule bridges lift and swell,stuck half-risen and unable to fit back in place.The news reports rising hospitalizations, even...
“Will the World Let Me Go Again?”: Talking “Dodge City” with Patrick deWitt
The celebrated novelist speaks with Michael Costaris about his latest book, his approach to fiction, and the creative habits that continue to propel one of contemporary fiction’s most singular careers.
“MOST DAYS I FEEL LIKE PNIN” and “THE DICTAPHONE CAN’T HEAR YOU NODDING”
“What remains
for me? Forty games
with the same opponent
who will not let me leave
that crooked kitchen table
where we sit till I admit
the mosquito egg
gender of defeat…”
Desire Lines: In Conversation with Kristen Millares Young
Beth Ward speaks with author and journalist Kristen Millares Young about her debut memoir, a shimmering feminist and forensic text that “excavates submerged truths about motherhood, the body, and the sacred.”
My Mother Asks If I Believe in You
I believe in the belief of you, numb-kneed women hunched like commas over the cap rail,smelling of dry tears and talcum, fingers basket-woven, or men bent slightly at the middle like folded playing cards, heads hung, the mumblings of their prayerslike the humming of...
“Ewww, You Are a Soft Girl”: A Conversation with Mansi Dahal
Ana Hein speaks with poet Mansi Dahal about her debut collection, Women in Marigold, as well as longing, matrilineal legacies, and the obsessive beauty of the image in poetry.
I NEEDED SOME LIGHT
“…I offered myself up to the pale field
of possibly, gravity—the answer
to your luminous grin, you, the god, the gamble.
I forgot my stupid life…”