The Cincinnati Review

05/09/2025

"I’m drawn back to these places, these ruins, because they form the imagistic, psychological core of me, but I also don’t want them to become anyone else’s p**n. Take your camera elsewhere, part of me whispers . . ."

This week on our site, a craft essay by Maya Jewell Zeller on how writers can best depict rural America without resorting to "poverty p**n":

https://buff.ly/r2dD0zR

04/09/2025

That was fast! Submissions to the print journal are now CLOSED. miCRo submissions (of pieces 500 words or fewer) remain open. Visit our submissions page for more details.

03/09/2025

"By the end of class half the goldfish were dead, / and Mr. K had to collect their bodies into a / white plastic bucket used for dirty mop water."

This week's miCRo by Ting Lin captures both that back-to-school feeling and the violence of coming-of-age. https://buff.ly/KZDCJ3j

A poem that captures that back-to-school feeling and the violence of coming-of-age.

02/09/2025

Congratulations to contributor Teo Shannon on today's publication of A CHRONOLOGY OF BLOOD with University of New Mexico Press!

01/09/2025

We are once again OPEN for submissions to both our print journal and miCRo! We strongly encourage you to submit to the print journal within the next day or so, as we tend to reach our cap just days after opening up.

29/08/2025

An appreciation for a book of nonfiction with a novel's sense of scene, setting, and character: Home of the Happy: A Murder on the Cajun Prairie by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot (). Read Lisa Ampleman's thoughts about it on our site:

A book of nonfiction written like a novel, moving with and then past the genre of true crime

27/08/2025

"the thin blank beach is survival, & so we run around the edges playing, building sandcastles, erasing thoughts of what could destroy us . . ."

This week's miCRo is "Fascism," by Mark Strohschein, a starkly titled ekphrastic prose poem about Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 painting, Black Square.

A starkly titled prose poem about a figurative ocean of blackness.

22/08/2025

"What happens when the things we love—whether beings, objects, or places—have lifespans that do not match our expectations?"

Today on the site, issue 22.1 contributor Zoe Ballering explores the idea of life spans in fiction. Link in first comment.

20/08/2025

"I try to picture them all as babies. Whenever my stomach lurches around a man, I remind myself he once toddled around in diapers, loved a mother, bit with milk teeth and only milk teeth...."

Today's miCRo is "In Transit" by Bella Gibbs, picked by our summer assistant editor, Jess Silfa. It's an essay that explores the vulnerability and rage at moving through public space in a q***r, feminine body. Link in first comment.

15/08/2025

A special feature on our site now: an essay by Debra Spark in which the "I" speaker doesn't emerge until halfway through. Instead, the piece tells the story of a woman learning the dark secret in her mother's past:

"The kidnapping and trial weren’t just a matter of public record when they occurred in 1966 and 1967. The story was front-page news. [. . .] And yet it had been a secret from Janet. How?”

Read more at our site: https://buff.ly/EjGUDol

13/08/2025

"Eyeglasses described the stars to Rocketship, who needed no prodding. So Eyeglasses served as navigator, and with Rocketship went exploring other universes."

This week's miCRo is "Eyeglasses and Rocketship" by Chris Haven. Link in comments.