Ladette Randolph is the director of "Ploughshares" magazine and is Distinguished Publisher-in-Residence in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College. She is the author of the short-story collection "This Is Not the Tropics" and the editor of "The Big Empty: Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction Writers" and "A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers," both available in Bison Books editions. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation grant, four Nebraska Book Awards, including one for "A Sandhills Ballad," and the Virginia Faulkner Award; her work has been reprinted in "Best New American Voices 2000."