A Writing Tip by Nathaniel Popkin STAY IN THE NOW My editor and dear friend Ann de Forest knows my writing better than I do—especially when I’m being imprecise, obtuse, or long-winded. She straightens my metaphors, shortens my sentences, and…
A Writing Tip by Autumn Konopka IN DEFENSE OF IMPERFECTION Beside my desk, I have a collage made from rejection emails I’ve received over the years. No, thank you. We’re unable to accept your work at this time. This just…
Fiction reviewed by Danielle Henson The Nature of Humans and Other Beings in Dave Housley’s ALIENS ATTACK! (Mason Jar Press) If you’ve ever watched an apocalypse sci-fi movie, you’ve likely also tried to picture yourself in the characters’ positions. Maybe…
A Writing Tip by Alan S. Kolok NESTED FOLDERS: A PRACTICAL APPROACH FOR IMPULSIVE SUBMITTERS When I write flash fiction, I get impulsive. I can write a piece in a few hours, then, while it is still fresh and exciting,…
Interview by Benjamin Woodard A CONVERSATION WITH MELANIE PAPPADIS FARANELLO, AUTHOR OF EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMETHING (University of Georgia Press) Melanie Pappadis Faranello’s debut story collection, Everybody Needs Something, winner of the 2025 Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, is…
A Writing Tip by Michael Hardin CHART YOUR OWN PATH About forty years ago, the poet Cynthia McDonald told me I was a much better reader than writer. I think she meant it as a compliment, but it’s been one…
Nonfiction by Jeannine A. Cook, reviewed by Jo Ann Zimmerman SHUT UP AND READ: A MEMOIR FROM HARRIETT’S BOOKSHOP (Amistad Books) In March of 2020, Walmart workers became essential, toilet paper disappeared, and we all forgot to unmute ourselves on…
A Writing Tip by Sharon White IT’S OKAY TO CHOOSE WELL-BEING OVER BRANDING For me writing is not a business. It’s an adventure and should be fun along with everything else. I suppose I made a decision when I was…
Interview by Joy Manning A CONVERSATION WITH NATHANIEL POPKIN, AUTHOR OF PARTLY STRONG, PARTLY BROKEN (New Door Books) In Nathaniel Popkin’s fourth novel, Partly Strong, Partly Broken, a progressive rabbi tries to hold her community together in the month leading…
A Writing Tip by Cathy Adams PRUNE YOUR WRITING HABITS After winter, new life emerges, fully cognizant of the mistakes of the previous season. That’s a distinct advantage—to carry the slate of the past with the freedom to erase the…
Interview by Anne Anthony A CONVERSATION WITH FIONA MCKAY, AUTHOR OF THE LIVES OF THE DEAD (Ad Hoc Fiction) Based in Dublin, Ireland, Fiona McKay is a lawyer-turned-author who has become a prolific writer of flash fiction over the past…
A Writing Tip by Autumn Konopka GET THEE TO A LIBRARY I still remember the smell of my childhood library: a mix of old paper, compulsory quiet, and possibility. I was a kid who loved to read—but I also had…
Poetry by Fred Dale, reviewed by Andres Rojas SAY, SAID (Driftwood Press) To the casual observer, the Mississippi River flows past New Orleans as peaceful and composed as a queen in her progress, yet its currents move surprisingly fast for…
A Writing Tip by Gin Coleman POLLINATE YOUR PROSE Mississippians joke that we only have two seasons down here. Summer and More Summer. Just when we think we’re having Winter, it is sun-surface hot again. But that is not necessarily…
Inside The Wire Nonfiction by Heather Sweeney, reviewed by Krista Puttler CAMOUFLAGE: HOW I EMERGED FROM THE SHADOWS OF A MILITARY MARRIAGE (Knox Press) The word camouflage can be traced back to the 14th century Italian word camuffare, which means…
A Writing Tip by Valerie Berton BUILDING YOUR BEST BIO Every writer needs a good bio. I’d argue you need a great bio. Pretty much every literary magazine requests a contributor bio, and most editors really do want to know…
Poetry by Kristen Gallagher 820 THE BEACH – HARE The image is as the title suggests: the beach. But also a person sitting on it, or possibly kneeling, facing the water, and also possibly covered in spores, or in the…
Fiction by David Driscoll CASKET SHOPPING Grandma died sitting up in her bed. It was the afternoon, and all four of us were there. We didn’t see her soul winging out of her mouth on a little puff of smoke…
Flash Nonfiction by Jacqueline Doyle FACEPLANT There was no time to think, just seconds as you fell, before your face hit the concrete with a sickening thud and so much force that you were sure you were dead or just…
Flash Nonfiction by Christopher Kostyn Passante INTERVENTION Let’s begin with your name. Thomas. Last name? Paine. Interesting. Why’s that interesting, doc? That you share a name with a famous revolutionary? It’s just a name my father gave me. I see.…
Poetry by Alan Pelaez Lopez DISASTER IS A POLITIC (Click on image to enlarge.) Alan Pelaez Lopez is a poet, installation, and adornment artist from Oaxaca, México. Pelaez Lopez’s debut visual poetry collection, Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien…
Fiction by June Martin SHE’S STILL HERE? For as long as any of us had known her, Jennifer had carried herself with the dignity of someone who was going to die young. She knew it would happen soon, and everyone…
Poetry by Beth Kephart LIGHTNING STRIKES Beth Kephart, a National Book Award finalist, is the award-winning author of some forty books and the author of the bestselling Substack, The Hush and the Howl. She turned to the paper arts…
Flash Nonfiction by Ellen Winn HOW TO SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR DAD AND HELLO TO YOUR BABIES Go to your dad’s first oncology appointment when you’re eight months pregnant with your first child. It will be unclear who needs a…
Fiction by EJ Green AFTERPARTY I’m buying cigarettes and a scratch-off ticket at Wawa when the dog starts following me. I don’t know the dog, but the dog assumes it knows me, because it sticks its nose against my pocket…
Flash by Jamie Holland THIS IS WHO WE ARE Before we were ten, we served gin and tonics and poured Chablis into glass after glass, navigating the thick forest of dark suits and wide ties, color-blocked dresses and soft walls…
Flash Nonfiction by Debbie Weaver HOMER On a Sunday morning, I shuffle from the family room where I’m reading to the kitchen and pour a second cup of coffee, stepping over my oldest daughter’s ten-year-old dog who is suffering from…
Poetry by Jack Brummett I WORK AT A DOG KENNEL Jack Brummett graduated from Arcadia University with a degree in English, concentration in Creative Writing. He is a lifelong Philadelphia resident, and throughout his life has been a writer, artist,…
Poetry by Amy Beth Sisson PITH VISPO / PITH TRANSLATION (A CONTRAPUNTAL) Pith Vispo Pith Translation (A Contrapuntal) My estimable mother bequeathed her body to science Where she was anatomized in a medical school lab As a girl, I loved…
Creative Nonfiction by Amy Beth Sisson THE WHITE-WALLED OFFICE In my doctor’s office I stared at white walls decorated with diplomas. The room had two doors. I tried to decide if one was smaller than the other or if it…
Visual Narrative by Clifford Thompson CONNECTICUS DIGGS, Cultural Detective Episode 5: The Path Clifford Thompson’s books include What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues and Big Man and the Little Men: A Graphic Novel. His newest book, Jazz June: A…
Flash by Laurie Blauner BATS The best I could manage was a high whistle while trying to tell the bats, Stay away. When they first arrived I wanted to speak to them but they were busy echolocating. At night, in…
Poetry by Alison Powell LIFE LOOP a. My mother dreams of Ninepenny, the sign marking it: her father’s land. A stream split down the middle by a crescent of mossy bank. She tells me about it, how they’d kept chickens.…
Flash by Karen Laws HOW PIGEONS WALK At the lake I remained alert, my gaze alighting upon every gray head. I watched anyone with a moderately stiff gait. I contemplated a grassy slope where people were sunbathing and thought, This…
Fiction by Tracy Morin AIR SUPPLY Love and Other Bruises I lived with a man, Barry, just before they enacted, after a lengthy period of contention in the usual government palaces, the Intercontinental Rationing of Oxygen Decree (IROD). Two days…
Poetry by G. Dylan Sessoms POEM ABOUT A PORTRAIT MY EX-WIFE HUNG IN THE KITCHEN, AND NOTHING ELSE G. Dylan Sessoms is a North Carolina native and southern poet. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Poetry at the University…
Poetry by Warren C. Longmire HOUSE FLAG FOR FATHERS Warren C. Longmire is a poet, performer, and technologist from North Philadelphia. His work explores code, computation, and digital poetics as tools for reframing language, race, national identity, and power.…
Flash Nonfiction by Brooke Middlebrook FIRST LESSON Us fourth-graders are sitting in a circle in the cafegymatorium awaiting our first flute lesson—all girls except poor AJ, no more saxophones left at the rental place—with instruments assembled in our laps, and…
Flash Nonfiction by Lauren Woods SPILLING OVER The time I drunk dialed my grandmother, I was twenty-three years old and just out of college. My sister and I had been drinking in our new apartment in Washington, DC, a small…
APRIL FOOLS!!! Cleaver going to fully AI “literature”? NOT A CHANCE! We’re committed to publishing the finest, cutting-edge literature, but we DO NOT consider AI-generated or AI-assisted work. Cleaver is here for the fully diverse spectrum of fully HUMAN voices.…
A Writing Prompt by Sarah Freligh WHAT CONDITION MY CONDITION WAS IN The conditional tense—sometimes called the conditional mood—is a wonderful way to explore and convey the great big holy “if” of a character’s life in both fiction and nonfiction.…
A Writing Tip by Eileen Toomey PREP WORK It’s spring, which means it’s time to repaint the fence—again. I couldn’t bring myself to do it last year; there’s the scraping, the bleach solution for the mold that crept in over…
Poetry by Zoë Ryder White, reviewed by Eleanor Ball THE VISIBLE FIELD (River River Books) Zoë Ryder White’s poetry is like when you push open a window, lean against the sill, and a breeze rustles in. As it plays with…
Interview by Joy Manning A CONVERSATION WITH CHLOE N. CLARK, AUTHOR OF EVERY GALAXY A CIRCLE (JackLeg Press) In the short story collection Every Galaxy a Circle (JackLeg Press), Chloe N. Clark’s characters encounter memory-erasure programs, zombie pandemics, time-travel tourism,…
A Writing Tip by Rebecca Entel ADD A MONKEY Award-winning writer and artist Lynda Barry tells us, “When I start feeling too concerned that all the words I write be very smart and about something worthwhile, I find my urge…
Diana Friedman & Valerie Berton USING THE HERMIT CRAB FORM FOR DIFFICULT MATERIAL Hermit crabs don’t naturally have shells, so they spend their lives seeking vacated shells as they grow, then make them their own to protect their soft and…
Jen Mathy GIVE THEM YOUR BEST SHOT The dreaded author photo. For many of us, it’s a hassle, a distraction, even a conceit. Writing your bio, taking an author photo…those acts lay bare your ambition, if to no one else…
Fiction by Cristina Rivera Garza translated by Christina MacSweeney, reviewed by Dylan Cook AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF COTTON (Graywolf Press) Years ago, my grandmother showed me a dried out twig studded with fluffy, white bolls of cotton. She explained how she used…
A Poetry Craft Essay by Jacob Butlett THE THREE CLASSICAL CATEGORIES OF POETRY AS VENN DIAGRAM The Narrative, the Dramatic, and the Lyric are broad classical categories of poems. For some, they may seem “too technical” to understand, let alone apply…
Krista Puttler A LITTLE SECRET Sometimes the first draft is… the one. Okay, before you throw your red pens at me (you still print out your drafts and edit by hand, don’t you?), hear me out. Obviously, the first draft…