Most Recent • Cleaver Magazine

CATALOGUE BABY: A MEMOIR OF INFERTILITY by Myriam Steinberg, reviewed by Brian Burmeister

Posted on June 14, 2021 by thwackJune 14, 2021

CATALOGUE BABY: A MEMOIR OF INFERTILITY by Myriam Steinberg; illustrations by Christache Page Two, 304 pages reviewed by Brian Burmeister The graphic memoir Catalogue Baby shares the deeply personal fertility journey of Myriam Steinberg. Compelled to leave her career, passion, and life as a festival organizer to pursue motherhood as a single 40-year-old, Steinberg’s immensely honest memoir chronicles the intense challenges she faced getting pregnant and carrying to term. Throughout the five years of her life covered in the book, Steinberg skillfully navigates shame, guilt, and loss in ways that help us understand the pain and frustration she was experiencing while balancing those brutal realities with humor. Among other amusements, we are welcomed to the literal “Carnival of Dreams Brought to You by I.V.F” where at the egg-shot carnival game you are given “10 shots for the price of your dignity and patience.” One of Steinberg’s many strengths is making … chop! chop! read more!

DEAR BEAR, poems by Ae Hee Lee Platypus Press, reviewed by Juniper Jordan Cruz

Posted on June 1, 2021 by thwackJune 12, 2021

DEAR BEAR by Ae Hee Lee Platypus Press, 42 pages Reviewed by Juniper Jordan Cruz Dear Bear begins with the gripping dedication, “For Daniel, to the end,” and from there, takes its readers to the end of the world it introduces. This is author Ae Hee Lee’s world that exists in a collection of letters addressed to the titular Bear—who is both a real and parabolic bear. The book is set in a forest, “at the border of every ruin, of every past home.” The forest is also both real and parabolic as a form of borderland, acting as a Romantic landscape: sublime and shaped around the speaker’s psyche. Because of this, the forest becomes a vessel for the speaker’s exploration of the relationship between her and Bear. Ae Hee Lee establishes the forest as a post-apocalyptic setting to navigate both the relief and anxiety that comes from surviving an … chop! chop! read more!

THE NATURAL MOTHER OF THE CHILD: A MEMOIR OF NONBINARY PARENTHOOD by Krys Malcolm Belc, reviewed by Beth Kephart

Posted on June 1, 2021 by thwackJune 1, 2021

THE NATURAL MOTHER OF THE CHILD: A MEMOIR OF NONBINARY PARENTHOOD Krys Malcolm Belc Counterpoint Press 304 pages Reviewed by Beth Kephart Krys Malcolm Belc—nonbinary, transmasculine, and talented—begins his memoir with an Irish dance—“all jumping and pounding, the tight black laces against my calves, the bang of hard shoes on the floor.” He is young and the music permeates, and now, he writes, “I try to remember what it was like then, when I was four and five and six, if I was unhappy. I am supposed to remember being unhappy, but mostly what I remember is what it’s like to stand there knowing the dance is about to start.” Supposed to remember. Supposed to be. Supposed to become. But suppose does not fit the life Belc will live. Competitive, just like his father. Prone to moments of rage. Enrolled in an all-girls’ Catholic school, dressed in the costumery of girlhood. … chop! chop! read more!

RESONANT PLACES: Houses We Live in, Homes that Live in Our Writing, a Fiction Craft Essay by Ellen Prentiss Campbell

Posted on May 8, 2021 by thwackMay 8, 2021

RESONANT PLACES Houses We Live in, Homes that Live in Our Writing A Fiction Craft Essay by Ellen Prentiss Campbell Memory and imagination cast spells. Fiction is inspired by places as well as temps perdue. Many of us have dreamed last night that we went back to—well, not Rebecca’s Manderley but to a place from our past, one that resonates. Some places are lost to us even if the building remains because we can never again enter and live there. Perhaps we can peer in, but we cannot look out the windows again, never see the way the world is framed from within that particular shelter again. Sometimes indeed an entire small world is lost to us. Although years later we may wander through a campus again, a neighborhood, the people are gone or so changed as to be unrecognizable. Without our remembered familiars, it’s empty as a stage set. … chop! chop! read more!

Juliana Lamy

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Sydney TammarineMay 5, 2021

Juliana Lamy is a Haitian fiction writer from South Florida. She holds a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University, where she won their 2018 Le Baron Russell Briggs Undergraduate Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine, Pidgeonholes, The Conium Review, and elsewhere. She is an incoming MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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A MEMOIR CONVERSATION

with David Marchino and Beth Kephart

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