The Cincinnati Review

25/06/2025

"My sister's unborn baby was as big as a striped skunk that week. Or, romaine lettuce." This week's miCRo, "Benevolent Ruler" by Mary Ardery, is an essay that presents the mundane but also demonstrates the complexities of women's health treatment. More on our site:

An essay in which the quotidian overlies concerns about women's health

24/06/2025

"Two gorillas crashed a Halloween party in 1975, befuddling their newlywed hosts. For nearly an hour, the primates sat in silence on the thrift-store sofa watching, from behind their masks of latex and fur, as the revelers drank and danced."

In our Family Secrets Folio, Shara Lessley talks about writing family secrets.

23/06/2025

Thank you to Verse Daily () for featuring four poems from our spring issue--by M. Cynthia Cheung, Jason Gray, Suzanne Frischkorn, and Leah Umansky--in the past week!

20/06/2025

"It's 1996 again. Conjuring his best Bela Lugosi, the Count looks into the camera and tells me he’s glad I joined him, so close to the witching hour, with all the fellow ghouls and undead. Here’s what we watch..."

A compilation of the best of Count Cool Rider's Saturday Fright at the Movies from contributor Shane Joaquin Jimenez to accompany his story in our spring issue:

https://buff.ly/HZuEnpM

19/06/2025

2024 winner of the Robert and Adele Schiff Award in poetry Leila Farjami shares what it means to receive acknowledgment of her work. Farjami's poem, "Bombs and Stars," appears in our current issue. The 2025 Robert and Adele Schiff Award is open until July 15!

18/06/2025

"On the beach we’d found a giant / Pacific chiton, prehistoric in orange / armor, vulvar foot still pulsing / between its gills ..." This week's miCRo is "The Red Negligee" by Jenny Molberg, a love poem with complex emotional sentiments. More on our site:

https://buff.ly/hBRyfl9

16/06/2025

"Just as I long for poems that carry the wisdom and surprise of my friends’ verbal play, I hope for novels that are absorbing, like a long conversation with a friend can be absorbing when she is getting closer and closer to the heart of the matter . . ."

In our Family Secrets Folio, Jessica Johnson reviews Morgan Talty's FIRE EXIT.

13/06/2025

On our site, contributor Louise Ling Edwards discusses her relationship to the Mandarin language and shares three calligraphy paintings:

"Each word felt precious and concrete. If I could remember the word for noodles, I could order them in the cafeteria the next day. . . ."

https://buff.ly/KWy2sst

12/06/2025

What was your gone-speechless-mid-sentence moment? 2024 fiction winner of the Robert and Adele Schiff Awards Patrick J. Zhou tells us about his. This year's awards are OPEN until July 15.

11/06/2025

"They pass her skin from one hand to another. A lesson for the wide-eyed children present: Good people share among themselves."

In this week's miCRo, A. A. Balaskovits gives us a glimpse into collective cruelty and our age-old fear of, and fascination with, difference.

In this Shirley Jackson-like fable, A. A. Balaskovits gives us a glimpse into collective cruelty and our age-old fear of, and fascination with, difference.

10/06/2025

Congratulations to contributor Ciaran Berry on the recent publication of STATES with The Gallery Press: Poetry & Drama from Ireland !

In States, his fourth collection, Ciaran Berry offers poems that are attentive to the cinema of the moment and the film that becomes the life.