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Cleaver Magazine shares “cutting-edge” artwork and literary work from a mix of established and emerging voices.We publish a quarterly literary magazine with poetry, short stories, essays, flash prose, visual art, graphic narratives, and visual art. Look for the literary quarterly in March, June, September, and December. In each issue we present several emerging writers and alongside established writers and artists. We see ourselves as facilitators and stewards of the literary and artistic work that we publish. In addition to our literary quarterly, we publish weekly and daily features, including Life As Activism (poetry and prose with a social justice theme), writer-to-writer craft essays, author interviews, travel essays, and reviews of books from small and independent publishers. Our weekly in-house advice columnist, “Ask June” opines on matters punctuational, interpersonal, and philosophical, spinning wit and literary wisdom in response to your ethical quandaries. Our podcast On The Edge is a virtual poetry reading series, available for download on iTunes and SoundCloud. Our radio plays feature original short scrips performed by professional actors. The scripts are available for download as PDF files; the recordings are free for listeners on iTunes and SoundCloud. About our name: “cleave” is a Janus word, also known as an “auto-antonym”, meaning both itself and its opposite. To “cleave” is both to stick tight and to fall away. A cleaver is the most broad-edged and brutally efficient kitchen knife, designed to be swung like a hammer for the most effective channel of force. “Cleave” also means to come together with strong attachment. Submissions guidelines at the Cleaver Magazine website. For book review queries, see the masthead on our website. For other queries, email: [email protected]
Another interview with Cleaver poetry editor Claire Oleson!
Claire Oleson is a writer hailing from Grand Rapids Michigan. She's a 2019 grad of Kenyon College, where she studied English and Creative Writing. Her work has been published by the Kenyon Review online, the University of Kentucky's graduate literary journal Limestone, the LA Review of Books, and Ne...
Check out EMILY STEINBERG's weekly QUARANTINE JOURNAL in Cleaver' COMIX. 12 new comix today!
Don't miss Emily Steinberg's latest comic QUARANTINE JOURNAL
Writers! Register today for TELLING TRUE STORIES: a workshop in creative nonfiction with Cleaver editor Sydney Tammarine July 27 – August 28. This class is open to both new and experienced writers.
Course description:
Writer Dinty W. Moore says that creative nonfiction equals curiosity plus truth. CNF comes in a variety of forms: from expansive memoir to intimate personal essay to the lightbulb “eureka!” of flash. But in any form, the CNF writer is a guiding voice in the dark: a storyteller seeking truth, thinking alongside the reader toward a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world.
In this class, we’ll practice the essay in its most dynamic form: a verb that means “to test; to practice; to taste; to try to do, accomplish, or make (anything difficult).” Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example essays and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instructor feedback.
This workshop has weekly readings and writing assignments to inspire you—and deadlines to motivate you—but the work can be done at your own pace and on your own time. There are no required meetings, although we’ll hold optional Zoom write-ins and discussions for those who are interested. We welcome both new and experienced writers looking for motivation, structure, and enthusiastic feedback on their work.
For more information and a syllabus, check out our website!
TELLING TRUE STORIES A Workshop in Creative Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Editor Sydney Tammarine 5 weeks July 27 – August 28 $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] Writer Dinty W. Moore says that creative nonfiction equals curiosity plus trut...
Happy to see quite a few Cleaver alums in this issue! Congrats to all!
So excited to see my flash fiction "Sooner or Later" in the new all-star all-flash issue of LITTLE FICTION/BIG TRUTHS (Little Fiction.). Can't wait to read flash by these amazing writers. Take some time out yourself to read the entire issue! Big thanks to the editors, particularly Troy Palmer and Beth Gilstrap. Here's my link: http://littlefiction.com/beta/2020Flash_JacquelineDoyle.html
"Don’t read THE ROYAL ABDULS if you are hungry; scene after scene steams with a dish, a scent, a meal....Do read THE ROYAL ABDULS if you are searching for hope in a complicated world—not every day hope, not the Hollywood version, but the kind that honors the nearly irresolvable dualities of ourselves." Beth Kephart reviews Ramiza Shamoun Koya's new novel THE ROYAL ABDULS, out this week from Forest Avenue Press. Today on Cleaver.
During the day and a half that I ravenously read Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s debut novel, The Royal Abduls, I asked myself these questions. I leaned into the lives of Koya’s magnificently drawn characters, into the nest of troubles they inadvertently twigged together, into the love they did not know h...
Oh, readers! June Cleaver is BACK! Five new letters written and answered from quarantine with useful advice concerning sanctimonious sisters, scary supermarketeers, nefarious neighbor kids, ATM dilemmas. And What to Do About Bob.
Catch up today on Cleaver!
Dear Readers, First, let me apologize to you for not having posted in so long. What with one thing and another, my alter ego in the real word became preoccupied. But the pandemic has vastly increased her free time: once she has decontaminated the day’s deliveries, Zoomed for an hour or two, walked...
Writers! Register today for the new session of Kathryn Kulpa's THE ART OF FLASH WORKSHOP, online at Cleaver June 25-July 20. The May session is filled.
Course Description: Flash is a genre defined by brevity: vivid emotions and images compressed into a compact form. We most often see flash fiction, but flash can also encompass prose poetry, micro memoir, lyric essays, and hybrid works.
In this class, we will take a close look at different styles and forms of flash fiction, as well as flash nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental works. Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example works and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instructor feedback, then will choose one story to revise for the final class.
This workshop has weekly deadlines and assignments to help motivate you to write, but the work can be done at your own pace and on your own time—there are no required meetings (although we may have an optional Zoom pop-up or two and bonus prompts for those who are interested). We welcome both new and experienced writers looking for motivation, structure, and constructive criticism.
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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 (Pelekinesis Press). Her flash fiction is published or forthcoming in Jellyfish Review, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf, and she serves as 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.
In this class, we will take a close look at different styles and forms of flash fiction, as well as flash nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental works. Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example works and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instruct...
Today on Cleaver, Andrea Caswell interviews Claire Oleson, author of the award-winning chapbook THINGS FROM THE CREED BED WE COULD HAVE BEEN, soon to be released from Newfound Press. Claire is a phenom: a recent grad of Kenyon College, she has been an editor at Cleaver for several years and is now our senior poetry editor. Here, she discuss reading as an act of art:
"Reading, too, is a work. Reading is deciding to believe in small and nonexistent rooms and move things around in them for a while. Please, if you’re reading this, come into the Creek Bed and mess up the furniture."
Claire Oleson’s chapbook, Things From the Creek Bed We Could Have Been, is the winner of the Newfound 2019 Prose Prize, awarded annually to a chapbook-length work of exceptional fiction or nonfiction that explores how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding.In this following intervie...
NEW TRENDS FOR SPRING by Emily Steinberg
https://www.cleavermagazine.com/new-trends-for-spring-a-comic-by-emily-steinberg
Can't decide what to wear to your next Zoom date? Check out the hot new fashions Emily Steinberg's latest comic NEW TRENDS FOR SPRING.
Don't miss Emily Steinberg's take on new trends for Spring 2020 face masks!
New workshop coming soon!
Jumpstart your writing! Join Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa for a 5-week online workshop in Flash fiction and nonfiction! The course runs from May 9 through June 6. This class is suitable for writers of all levels looking for motivation, structure, and constructive criticism. Workshop limit: 12. Early registration discount through May 1!
Gabriel Chazan reviews SQUARE HUNTING by Francesca Wade, "an examination of the intellectual and personal lives of five furiously independent women living in Mecklenburgh Square, at the far edge of Bloomsbury, between the two world wars." New from Crown Publishing, Tim Duggan Books: "Wade’s book is the ideal type of biography for the moment with layers of enjoyable historical detail of all kinds as well as an argument for the independent life. By going into the past and particularly past moments of crisis, it is possible to start imagining a future."
In a short piece of writing on “London Under Siege,” written during World War II, Virginia Woolf wrote that “everybody is feeling the same thing: therefore no one is feeling anything in particular. The individual is merged in the mob.” Reading these words now, as we live through a different ...
Jumpstart your writing! Join Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa for a 5-week online workshop in Flash fiction and nonfiction! The course runs from May 9 through June 6. This class is suitable for writers of all levels looking for motivation, structure, and constructive criticism. Workshop limit: 12. Early registration discount through May 1!
THE ART OF FLASH A Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 5 weeks May 9 — June 6, 2020 $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] REGISTER HERE Flash is a genre defined by brevity: vivid emotions and images compress...
Congratulations to Cleaver editor Sydney Tammarine, whose essay "Blue Hour" appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Ploughshares!
https://www.pshares.org/issues/spring-2020
Today on Cleaver, Grassroots Democrats HQ founder Brian Colker "wigs out" for democracy with his review of Eitan Hersh's POLITICS IS FOR POWER, from Scribner Books: "Hersh’s book is an important one for Democrats and those who oppose Trump and Trumpism in 2020—we will need an army of volunteers to take back power at the local, state, and federal level, and hopefully the book will motivate some hobbyists to turn off the news and get off twitter."
Hersh’s book is an important one for Democrats and those who oppose Trump and Trumpism in 2020—we will need an army of volunteers to take back power at the local, state, and federal level, and hopefully the book will motivate some hobbyists to turn off the news and get off twitter.
Cleaver Magazine's Spring Issue is LIVE! No paywall. Featuring short stories by Catherine Parnell, Nick Kolakowski, Andrea Ellis-Perez, Caroline Curran, Tatyana Sundeyeva, and Beth Alvarado. Flash by Uma Dwivedi, Neeru Nagarajan, Kim Magowan, Amy Kiger-Williams, Vanessa Saunders, and Matthew Tyler Boyer. Poetry by Marc Harshman, John Middlebrook, J Pascutazz, Juheon Rhee, Sherine Elise Gilmour, and Jackie Craven. Art by Serge Lecomte, curated by Raymond Rorke. And a new visual narrative on quarantine life by Emily Steinberg. Check out our issue, free to all readers, on Cleaver!
Fresh-Cut Lit & More Issue No. 29 • SPRING Forward 2020 Visual Narrative Ring the Bells by Emily Steinberg SHORT STORIES Catherine Parnell, Welcome to the Train Wreck Nick Kolakowski, Squeeze Andrea Ellis-Perez, Aniscia † Caroline Curran, Clean Lines † Tatyana Sundeyeva, Gaslight and Shadows B...
Ring the bells! Cleaver Magazine's Issue #29 goes live tonight at midnight with new fiction, poetry, flash, art, and a visual narrative by Emily Steinberg. Free to all readers; no paywall. Visit us at cleavermagazine.com.
"Hinnefeld writes empathetically. She writes, too, with lacerating emotional economy. In between she layers in the world—its reflective surfaces, its values, its artistic traditions, its gators, the secrets that are suppressed until they aren’t." Today on Cleaver, Beth Kephart reviews THE BEAUTY OF THEIR YOUTH: Stories by Joyce Hinnefeld. Coming this month from Wolfson Press. Read the full review today on Cleaver!
There are five Hinnefeld stories, four of them previously published in literary journals, in The Beauty of Their Youth, a release from the Wolfson Press American Storytellers series. One is about the legacy of a “pool of desire.” One is about the accessorizing of a family crime. One is about the...
Beth Kephart reviews Gregory Djanikian's latest book
SOJOURNERS OF THE IN-BETWEEN, out this week from Carnegie Mellon University Press:
"Searingly unpretentious, the closest thing to authentic I can imagine, Djanikian’s lines provide a kind of shelter, as, with him, we watch and wait and wonder." Read the full review today on Cleaver!
In his new heartbreaking and affirming book of poems, his seventh, Gregory Djanikian writes past complexity toward the elemental and the binding. He unites the “beautiful and the raw,” plays no tricks, displays no tics, exploits nothing but the moment and the thought that accompanies it. He find...
Check out today's modern-love-with-a-surprise twist by Cleaver author Bonnie Altucher!
Agreeing to see him again would require a minor miracle. A minor miracle is exactly what happened.
"HOW TO BUILD A HEART encourages us to embrace our authentic selves by letting go, not only of secrets, but of the desire to hide parts of ourselves in hopes that others will accept us. The key to building a heart, as Padian passionately writes, is a solid foundation of self-acceptance." Today on Cleaver, Kristie Mae Gadson reviews HOW TO BUILD A HEART, a YA novel by Maria Padian Books. From Algonquin Young Readers. Read the full review today on Cleaver!
HOW TO BUILD A HEART by Maria Padian Algonquin Young Readers, 339 pages reviewed by Kristie Gadson Isabella Crawford doesn’t keep secrets, she guards them. Protects them: People love to talk about themselves, and if you keep directing the conversation and questions back to them, they leave the int...
Today on Cleaver David Grandouiller reviews Elena Ferrante's INCIDENTAL INVENTIONS, released recently from Europa Editions, a year's worth of weekly columns written for The Guardian: "Short and tightly woven, of [these 51 pieces] meanders the landscape of the writer’s memories and thoughts with a practiced nonchalance, driving all the while toward a kind of volta in the last few sentences, and ending, usually, in a punchy, epigrammatic final line: “What perhaps should be feared most is the fury of frightened people” or “We can be much more than what we happen to be” or “All in all, I’m doing fine.” Read the full review today on Cleaver!
Who is the Italian novelist we call Elena Ferrante? Since her first novel’s publication in 1992, she—with the help of her publishers—has carefully maintained the real author’s anonymity. Many readers have treated this guarded privacy as a playful challenge, making theories and guesses, parti...
Philadelphia readers may recognize author Donna W. Hill as the gifted, young vision-impaired street artist who performed in Suburban Station in the 70's and 80s'. Now a journalist, activist, YA writer, and recording artist, she's reviewed OUTSIDE MYSELF, a young adult novel by blind author Kristen Witucki that "helps readers consider that sighted people don’t always have the answers, and highlights some of the challenges they have maintaining the attitudes of hopefulness and curiosity necessary for blind people to make a leap into an independent, nonvisual lifestyle."
Find the full review, along with purchasing options for visually impaired readers, today on Cleaver
OUTSIDE MYSELF by Kristen Witucki Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 232 pages reviewed by Donna W. Hill Superbly written, Outside Myself by Kristen Witucki gets to the heart of the human experience. Blended and broken families struggle with issues that tear parents and children apart. Trying to do their b...
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