The Cincinnati Review

20/11/2023

"Of course, as with the march to integration during the Civil Rights era, my attempt at cross-fertilization turned out largely to be a one-way street. While poets from local poetry communities would occasionally show up for our academic poetry readings, the reverse was rarely the case."

Read this exclusive excerpt of Tyrone Williams's "Arrested Cross-Fertilization," a history of reading series in Cincinnati and the racial lines that divided them, from issue 20.2. https://buff.ly/3uaWQBc

18/11/2023

We are very thankful all month! As a special thank-you to all of you in this heart-shaped state, we are offering 50% off subscriptions for OH residents until the end of November. https://buff.ly/3tYhdla

18/11/2023

"July 27, 1983: Untitled (Girl) stands alone on Seventh Street staring at a dim reflection of herself. She is a work of mid-1950s figurative surrealism. You might expect languorous grace (such as: a melted clock sliding down a wall, such as: a skeleton curling to pick up a seashell), but her movements are jerky and disconnected, each one a separate act of defiance. She woke up one morning on the unswept floor of some Lower East Side gallery, having grown overnight the ungainly body of an adult woman; she’s only had eighteen months to get used to it."

Read this featured excerpt of Alexandra Munck's "UNTITLED (GIRL)" from issue 20.2.

You think summers in New York are humid now, but this is nothing compared to 1983. That year the air was full of heavy metals. Headless bodies in topless bars, the first AIDS vigil, candle flames seizing in a night that felt like wet fleece. When de Kooning’s Seated Woman got up and walked away fr...

17/11/2023

"WENDY AND LUCY is a film about one person’s everyday struggle to survive within a society and economic model that values profit over humanity." -- In our new film column, "Talking Pictures," assistant editor Holli Carrell discusses Kelly Reichardt's film on its fifteenth anniversary.

Assistant Editor Holli Carrell discusses Kelly Reichardt's film, Wendy and Lucy, in our new film column, "Talking Pictures."

16/11/2023

"[L]ike Koch, I suffocated in the suburbs. Cincinnati, by the ’70s, had become overrun with asphalt and concrete. The incursion of restaurant chains and strip malls, soon to be followed by big-box stores, awakened a desire in me to purchase everything in sight. If I wanted to be more than a consumer, I would have to be cast out, I would have to track down pockets of writers and readers in urban centers where I could cultivate the intellectual and creative life." In this exclusive featured excerpt from issue 20.2, L.S. Klatt explores the Cincinnati of poet Kenneth Koch.

L. S. Klatt on poet Kenneth Koch's relationship to the city where he grew up.

16/11/2023

Cincinnati writers: Join CR's Managing Editor, Lisa Ampleman, as she discusses small publishers at Cincinnati Books by the Banks--this Saturday at 11am!

15/11/2023

"These planes that creep away
in the middle of the night,
their engines off,
careless and lumbering,
where do they go? . . ."

This week's miCRo post is two poems by Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, translated by Khaled Mattawa.

Two poems by an exiled Iraqi poet that blend the everyday with the horrors of war.

14/11/2023

An embarrassment of riches this year with the work of CR contributors recognized by our friends at CLMP . "Or Better Yet" by Melissa Llanes Brownlee is featured on their reading list!

For Native American Heritage Month, observed annually during the month of November, we asked our members—independent presses, literary journals, and others—to share with us some of the books and magazines they recommend reading in celebration.   Poetry   Dissolve by Sherwin Bitsui Copper Canyo...

14/11/2023

Congratulations to contributor Elton Glaser on the publication of GHOST VARIATIONS, released Oct 24 by Pitt Poetry Series!

|9780822967194|Poems|Elton Glaser’s ninth book of poems is haunted by the loss of his wife, each April bringing back the memory of her death. The opening line confesses the struggle to find a language for this grief: “I’m learning to speak in the accents of adieu.” As the book progresses thr...

13/11/2023

Thank you to everyone who made last night's Q***R STORIES X Q***R SOUP a success! Lots of people came out to eat soup and hear extraordinary readings from Willie Carver Jr and others. A special shout-out to CR editor Haley Crigger for creating this joyful event, and Dior J. Stephens for MCing. The photos are dark but our hearts are bright!

10/11/2023

"That I’m refraining from naming my own traumatizer is doing to myself what my relatives admonished me to do: I am preserving my current relationship with the traumatizer, I am redacting the facts—voice, actions—of the traumatizer to preserve my own sense of safety and ease." An essay by Ginger Ko enacts and complicates redaction about trauma:

Ginger Ko complicates what it can mean to say "Me too" in an essay about familial abuse.

09/11/2023

"I forgot to mention that riding the flying jaguar was none other than José Emilio Pacheco’s ghost. Had I accidentally taken hallucinogenic drugs? No, I mean, I had Starbucks for breakfast, but everything was checking out as normal. Pacheco descended from the winged jaguar and asked my name. 'My name is Jose Hernandez Diaz,' I mumbled. 'Are you from around here?'"

Read an exclusive excerpt of two works by Jose Hernandez Diaz, featured in issue 20.2. Diaz's collection, BAD MEXICAN, BAD AMERICAN, forthcoming from Acre Books, is featured in Publishers Weekly !

The Coyote Who Was Once a Dragon A rugged coyote wandered close by the oceanside communities. Tired, it sat beneath a palm tree and took a nap. It dreamed of its former life as a medieval dragon. It had conquered many rustic lands as a fierce dragon. Now, the lonesome coyote hardly ever sang

08/11/2023

"my mouth a desert, desirous of shapes / like whispered kisses to one I adore." -- in this week's miCRo, Winshen Liu contemplates sustenance and hunger.

Winshen Liu's poem "Lunch Break" interrogates hunger and sustenance.

06/11/2023

Casting about for a new podcast to listen to? The latest episode of Writing Class Radio features "The Game for Winners": a miCRo by Kimberly Elkins!

Writing Class Radio is a podcast of a writing class.There's no better way to understand ourselves and each other than by writing and telling our true personal stories.

05/11/2023

Do you know an Ohioan who loves to read? Give the gift of year-round reading: a subscription to CR, delivered to any Ohio address at 50% off this month. Use the code BUCKEYE at checkout. https://buff.ly/3tYhdla

03/11/2023

We continue to mourn the defunding of literary journals at academic institutions across the country. The loss of Green Mountains Review is a loss for the entire writing community.

03/11/2023

"...and don’t forget to accessorize for your chapel tour with a string of locally sourced prayer bones."

In her new column, assistant editor Lily Davenport pitches a gothic, genre-blending vacation in Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth.

Break out your cashmere robes and your thickest skeleton-knitted gloves and socks, and don’t forget to accessorize for your chapel tour with a string of locally sourced prayer bones.

02/11/2023

We love our Ohio readers! As a special thank-you to all of you in this heart-shaped state, we are offering 50% off subscriptions for OH residents until the end of November. https://buff.ly/3tYhdla

02/11/2023

We're seeing your beautiful photos of issue 20.2 as it lands in your mailboxes, and loving them! This issue looks good on so many surfaces (and there's a lot under the surface, too).

01/11/2023

"Naturally, we also exchange other tidbits about their futures that we’re privy to as the descendants of oracles."

In this week's miCRo, Soramimi Hanarejima speculates on a future love to illuminate a present friendship between two precognitive mothers. https://buff.ly/3tSA1lz

Naturally, we also exchange other tidbits about their futures that we’re privy to as the descendants of oracles.

31/10/2023

What's that, you say? A request for a spooky miCRo roundup? We're on it!

We've rounded up some of our all-time spookiest miCRos for your reading pleasure this Halloween.

31/10/2023

Happy Halloween! The editors of CR wish you a spooky and fun-filled day of reading and writing.

27/10/2023

"Unfortunately, my work hasn't been particularly popular ..." Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman shares the rewards of writing fan letters, for writer and for fan, as she describes the time she wrote to a YA author in the early 1990s.

When I wrote a fan letter to a writer in 1992 and he wrote back, and how it makes me think about failure and success.

26/10/2023

Come work alongside us! The University of Cincinnati English Department seeks applications for the position of Assistant Professor in Technical and Professional Communication.

Assistant Professor, English, College of Arts and Sciences

25/10/2023

Halloween is the best literary holiday. Here at the CR office we're getting excited for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music - CCM and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company production of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN from Oct 19-22 and 26-28: definitely the best Scandinavian vampire novel of all time. Who's your favorite literary vampire? An informal poll of the editors on-hand at time of posting has Assistant Editor Holli Carrell voting for classic Dracula and Assistant Editor Lily Davenport in favor of Gregory von Bayern from John M. Ford's THE DRAGON WAITING, while Assistant Managing Editor Bess Winter's heart belongs to Anne Rice's Lestat.

UC’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC) present Let The Right One In, a bloody vampire play based on the bestselling novel and award-winning film. Led by CSC Artistic Director Brian Isaac Phillips, the collaborative performance features professional CS...

25/10/2023

"The mermaid's brain floats in a sac near her head. Stegosaurus plates rise along her spine as if she is history." -- in this week's miCRo, Lisa Alletson takes us to a haunted place where words disappear.

Lisa Alletson's "Apocalypse" is perfect both for the spooky season and for the anxious writer in all seasons.

24/10/2023

TODAY and TOMORROW: poet, editor, and educator will visit the Elliston Poetry Room (). We spoke to him about his new book, THE RENDERING ().

Assistant Editor Holli Carrell interviews the poet Anthony Cody, who will visit UC on October 24 and 25 2023 as part of our Visiting Writers Series.

20/10/2023

Congratulations to contributor Erin Hoover on the release of NO SPARE PEOPLE, out today from Black Lawrence Press.

Poetry. Women’s Studies / Gender Studies. Writing About the South. No Spare People documents the joys and perils of a tiny mother-daughter family navigating life on the margins. From poems about finding autonomy as a q***r, unpartnered parent by choice in the South to those chronicling a generatio...

20/10/2023

This week on the blog, we speak with poet, editor, and educator Anthony Cody about his new book, THE RENDERING. Cody will visit Cincinnati and the Elliston Poetry Room at UC next week for two events on October 24th and October 25th at 5:30 pm.

Assistant Editor Holli Carrell interviews the poet Anthony Cody, who will visit UC on October 24 and 25 2023 as part of our Visiting Writers Series.

18/10/2023

"The girl waited with the dogs. She stared at the railroad tie, hoping it or whatever was under it wasn’t going to move on her watch." Don't miss Molly Sentell Haile's haunting new flash story, "Sea of Love," this week's featured miCRo:

Molly Sentell Haile's flash fiction story, "Sea of Love," ponders how quickly the natural world and external forces can breach the safeguards of home and family.

17/10/2023

Great contributor book releases this week! Congratulations to Kelle Groom for HOW TO LIVE: A MEMOIR IN ESSAYS from Tupelo Press and Matthew Minicucci for DUAL from Acre Books

16/10/2023

Live in Ohio? Interested in arts and culture? The Ohio Arts Council is conducting a short online survey on arts and culture in our state that will better help them invest in the arts in the future. Respondents are eligible to win a $50 gift card. Take the survey:

Take this survey powered by surveymonkey.com. Create your own surveys for free.

15/10/2023

Do you have excellent flash fiction, poetry, or non-fiction that's under 500 words and looking for a home? This is your friendly reminder that CR is always open to submissions for our online miCRo series. Our submission guidelines: https://buff.ly/46Q2OFY

13/10/2023

"Cincinnati—out of whose horseshoe-studded mud emerges smutty nineteenth-century breweriana, crooked mansions and crumbling row houses, Proctor and Gamble factory flotsam, Prohibition-era tunnels and nooks, petrified remains of Pete Rose trading cards, waxy shards of King Records, the bullet that paralyzed Larry Flynt, and the crinkly stubs of Jerry Springer’s checkbook—is the Rome of Ohio. It’s full of old signs, functional and defunct. We live in the shadow of history, here, and we’re just trying to get to Kroger. "

Today on the blog, Assistant Managing Editor Bess Winter sings the praises of a historical marker in St. Bernard, Ohio.

Wordplay and whimsy are afoot on this delightful historical marker, erected in 1959 by the St. Bernard City Council.

11/10/2023

"The body was held at the Beer, Wine, Worms shack on the back side of the lake where men recreated without their women." In this week's miCRo, Kirstin Allio explores a distanced loss, and all the absurdities that arrive along with it.

The body was held at the Beer, Wine, Worms shack on the back side of the lake where men recreated without their women.

21/12/2022

In our final blog post of 2022, Issue 19.2 contributor Claire Denson reads her poem "Hibernation":

"When bears hibernate,

their bodies recycle to stay
alive: reabsorbing urine, f***s,
like a dream each night...."

Claire Denson reads her poem "Hibernation" from our Issue 19.2.