Stuart Sheppard

3 weeks ago | pittsburghquarterly.com | Stuart Sheppard |Aakanksha Agarwal |Marianne Dougherty

If there’s a miracle in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s current performance of the 1962 Edward Albee play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — it’s that two well-educated couples can argue drunkenly for over three hours and never once broach the subject of politics. (And these couples are of different generations, no less). Of course, this would never happen today. But my oh my, how much more interesting conversation can be when the political realm is eschewed.

1 month ago | pittsburghquarterly.com | Stuart Sheppard |Vicky A. Clark |Aakanksha Agarwal |Marianne Dougherty

Sometime around the turn of the millennium – resulting from what I would ascribe to the rise of social media and cable broadcasting — the term “trope” began to lose its classic and pregnant meaning of “figure of speech,” (i.e. an expression used in a nonliteral sense).

2 months ago | pittsburghquarterly.com | Stuart Sheppard |Vicky A. Clark |Aakanksha Agarwal |Marianne Dougherty

One thing, as men, that we rarely talk about, are the experiences we have suffered in the form of sexual abuse or trauma. The National Institute of Health found that 30.7 percent of men report having been the victims of sexual violence . . . and more than half of those before the age of 16. A 2014 study found that it takes on average about 20 years for a man to talk about his history of sexual maltreatment, because of the implicit stigma, coupled with our societal mores regarding masculinity.

Sep 4, 2024 | pittsburghquarterly.com | Fred Shaw |Dennis Unkovic |Stuart Sheppard

Until the closing of Carmody’s Restaurant in Franklin Park after 62 years, turtle soup remained a fixture on its menu. Once a staple of fine dining, turtle soup typically came paired with a shot of sherry to both sweeten and thin the stew-y broth.

Aug 7, 2024 | pittsburghquarterly.com | Fred Shaw |Stuart Sheppard

Part monomyth, part road-trip adventure, Scenic Overlook, Carnegie Mellon University grad Anne Ray’s debut collection of linked stories has the feel of a throwback. Mostly set in the analog, though not uncomplicated, time of the late 1990s, Ray uses 13 narratives to build something novelistic as her protagonist, Katie Hight, a 21-year-old college student on the verge of graduating, feels her life shift after the sudden loss of her father.