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About Cleveland Review of Books

The Cleveland Review of Books is a journal of criticism in many forms. We publish reviews, essays, interviews, and experiments in critical writing. We also publish fiction, poetry, and excerpts of titles from small and independent publishers. Founded in 2018 to fill a perceived gap in regional criticism, we showcase Midwestern writers and concerns alongside, and in dialogue with, writing from around the world. As cities on bodies of water have historically been hubs for the flow of goods and commerce, we view ourselves—a publication based in a city on a lake—as a metaphorical port of call for cultural exchange. In a landscape where American writing and publishing has become concentrated on the coasts, we stake a claim for literary modes and responses that challenge this arrangement, along with its conventions and assumptions. Editorially, we commit to criticism as a creative practice and a literature unto itself, embracing its formal and expressive potential. We prioritize ambitious authors, presses, and artists over our own house style, and take inventive writers seriously regardless of their age or credentials. We question established paradigms of professionalism, seriousness, and respectability, paying minimal deference to time, fashion, or the market. There is always something else out there and our aim is to always be something else: not just a journal of criticism, but a journal of what criticism can be.