Frequent Choppers & Thwackers

Amy-Victoria-Blakemore
Amy Victoria Blakemore is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, where she served for three years as a writing tutor. She earned honors for her senior thesis on contemporary iterations of Superman in comics and graphic literature, and she also was awarded an Academy of American Poetry Prize. Her work appears in the The Kenyon Review, [PANK], and The Susquehanna Review ...
Anna Strong
Anna Strong's work has previously appeared in the Penn Review, the Pennsylvania Gazette, Peregrine, and Poems for the Writing. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a master's degree from Boston College. Anna helps teach Penn’s Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course through Coursera. Read her poetry in Cleaver: "From Apostrophes" (Issue No. 2) and "Dear Couch" (Preview Issue.) ...
Ashlee Paxton-Turner
Ashlee Paxton-Turner is a native of Williamsburg, Virginia, and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she was an English major with a creative writing concentration. A former Teach For America corps member in rural North Carolina, Ashlee is now a lawyer and graduate of Duke University School of Law ...
Carlo Matos
Carlo Matos has published four books of poetry. His latest, The Secret Correspondence of Loon and Fiasco is forthcoming from Mayapple Press. He has also published in many journals like Another Chicago Magazine, Iowa Review, PANK, and The Rumpus. Carlo teaches writing at the City Colleges of Chicago and is a former cage fighter. He blogs at carlomatos.blogspot.com ...
Claire Foster Rudy headshot
Claire Rudy Foster is an award-winning queer, nonbinary trans author from Portland, Oregon. Foster's critically acclaimed short story collection Shine of the Ever was an O: The Oprah Magazine pick for 2019. Their essays, fiction, reporting, book reviews, and other writing appear in The New York Times, McSweeney's, Allure, on NPR, and many other places. Foster is Senior Features Editor at The Rumpus. They still believe in the power of well-written sentences ...
Colleen-Davis
Colleen Davis is a Pennsylvania writer and author of the website Between the Pond and the Woods, which provides information and a Facebook forum for dementia caregivers. Her writing has been featured in Making Sense of Alzheimer'sElephant Journal, and on episodes of the television documentary  Philadelphia: The Great Experiment ...
Elizabeth-Mosier
Elizabeth Mosier logged 1,000 volunteer hours processing colonial-era artifacts at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park Archeology Laboratory to write Excavating Memory: Archaeology and Home (forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2019). A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, her nonfiction has been selected as notable in Best American Essays and appears widely in journals and newspapers including Cleaver, Creative Nonfiction, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She writes the “Intersections” column for the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin.  Read more at www.ElizabethMosier.com ...
Gabriel-Chazan
Gabriel Chazan, a filmmaker and writer, is from Toronto, Canada. He is a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. He particularly enjoys writing about contemporary art and photography.   ...
J.G. McClure
J.G. McClure's work appears in Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, Colorado Review, The Pinch, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. He has an MFA from the University of California-Irvine and is at work on his first collection. See more at jgmcclure.weebly.com ...
Johnny-Payne
Johnny Payne is Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary's University, Los Angeles.  His most recent book of poetry is Vassal.  Forthcoming is the poetry collection Heaven of Ashes, from Mouthfeel Press ...
Justin Goodman
Justin Goodman earned his B.A. in Literature from SUNY Purchase. His writing--published, among other places, in Cleaver Magazine, TwoCities Review, and Prairie Schooner--is accessible from justindgoodman.com. His chapbook, The True Final Apocalypse, is forthcoming from Local Gems ...
Kathryn Kulpa
Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and has had work selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2020 and 2021 (Pelekinesis Press).  Her flash fiction is published or forthcoming in Flash Frog, 100 Word Story, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf, and she serves as chief flash editor for Cleaver Magazine. Kathryn has been a visiting writer at Wheaton College and has led writing workshops at the University of Rhode Island, Stonecoast Writers Conference at the University of Southern Maine, Writefest in Houston, Texas, and at public libraries throughout Rhode Island ...
Kenna-O'Rourke
Kenna O’Rourke is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in The Pocket Guide, the Philos Adelphos Irrealis chapbook, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. She has served as an editorial assistant for Jacket2, the editor of the Penn Art & Culture blog, the managing editor for Penn's Filament magazine, and an enthusiastic employee of the Kelly Writers House ...
Kristie Gadson
Kristie Gadson is a copywriter by day, a book reviewer by night, and an aspiring comic book artist in-between time. Her passions lie in children's books, young adult novels, fantasy novels, comics, and animated cartoons because she believes that one is never "too old" to learn the life lessons they teach. Kristie resides in Norristown on the outskirts of Philadelphia PA, which she lovingly calls "her little corner of the universe." ...
Lynn-Levin
Lynn Levin is a poet, writer, translator, and teacher. Her work has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Per Contra, Painted Bride Quarterly, Boulevard, and other places. She teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania. Her website is www.lynnlevinpoet.com. The second edition of Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press) by Valerie Fox and Lynn Levin is expected to be published in 2018. “Eve and Lilith Go to Macy’s” and Levin’s other Lilith poems may be found here ...
Matthew Girolami
Cleaver Senior Poetry Editor Matthew Girolami holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Believer, Horsethief, Two Peach, and elsewhere. His reviews appear in Jacket2 and Poetry International Online. He lives in Iowa City and teaches at the University of Iowa ...
Michelle Fost
Michelle Fost is a writer living in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in Geist Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. She is a book review and fiction editor at Cleaver ...
Nathaniel Popkin
Cleaver reviews editor Nathaniel Popkin is the author of five books, including the 2018 novel Everything is Borrowed, and co-editor (with Stephanie Feldman) of the anthology Who Will Speak for America? His essays and works of criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, LitHub, Tablet Magazine, and Public Books. If you are an author or publicist seeking reviews or a writer hoping to write reviews for Cleaver, query Nathaniel ...
Rory-McCluckie
Rory McCluckie is a freelance writer and editor from Manchester, England. A graduate of the University of Leeds, he currently resides in Montreal ...
Shinelle Espaillat
Shinelle L. Espaillat writes, lives and teaches in Westchester County, NY. She earned her M.A. in Creative Writing at Temple University. Her work has appeared in Midway Journal ...
Stephanie-Trott-
Stephanie Trott received a B. A. in English and Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College in 2012. Her work has appeared in Polaris: An Undergraduate Journal of Literature and Arts, Bryn Mawr's Nimbus magazine, and the premiere issue of Buffalo Almanack. An aspiring writer and photographer, she is pursuing an MFA in fiction at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.  ...
Tahneer-Oksman-by-Liana-Finck
Tahneer Oksman is the Graphic Narrative Reviews Editor for Cleaver Magazine. She recently completed her Ph.D. in English Literature at the Graduate Center at CUNY. Her articles on women’s visual culture have been published or are forthcoming in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Studies in Comics, and several upcoming anthologies. She has taught at NYU-Gallatin, Brooklyn College, and Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Her book How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?  is available from Columbia University Press. She is on faculty at Marymount Manhattan College as Assistant Professor of Writing and Director of the Writing Seminar Program. Author portrait by Liana Finck. ...

typing contest

Photo credit: Bernard Goldbach on Flickr