Pitches and Submissions
The Cleveland Review of Books invites pitches and submissions of critical writing that prioritize formal vision and generous engagement with their subject matter. We look for writing that demonstrates a committed sense of style and perspective. We call for analysis that takes calculated risks and rewards attention. While the writing we publish frequently takes the form of a review, it is our conviction that the best “reviews” are critical-creative essays rooted in one or more texts operating within a recognizable critical mode. They may also be collaborations, letters, conversations, disruptions, or other inventions. Furthermore, a “text” can be many things. Our goal is to publish writing that examines ideas, techniques, and contexts extending beyond any singular work or moment, offering the aforementioned qualities of style and analysis regardless of the recognizability of its form. To acquaint yourself with the quality and styles we’re interested in, we recommend reading what’s on our site before pitching.
Although we’re especially committed to publishing writing on, about, and from Cleveland and Ohio, as well as the Rust Belt and greater Midwest, a regional connection is by no means a requirement. That being said, do let us know where you live in your pitch email.
Email pitches@clereviewofbooks.com to pitch or submit. Everything we receive is considered for both online and print publication. When pitching, please provide in two to five paragraphs outlining your a specific angle or provisional idea(s) for your review or essay. Our current rates are $100 for online publication and $200 for print. We aim to respond to all pitches and submissions within six weeks.
Beyond genre, we value critical writing in any shape that fits one or more of the categories below. We also encourage pitches that purposefully push at their boundaries.
Literature
Fiction. Poetry. Nonfiction. “Creative” nonfiction. Hybrid, multi-genre, interdisciplinary, genreless writing and reading. Collections. Selections. Works in translation. Graphic texts. Art books. Photo books. Zines. Scenes. Small and independent presses. Community projects. New releases. Forgotten voices. Reissued classics. Medium-term bangers. Real stinkers. Physical, digital, ephemeral.
Poetics
Contemporary and ancient. Verse and prose. Aesthetic and ontological theories of reading and writing. (Mis)understanding. (Il)legibility. Saying. Looking. Hearing. Meaning. Making. Failing to.
Collaborative Criticism
Essays, reviews, interviews qua exchanges, arguments, rejoinders. Forms authored by two or more writers which forefront collaborative methods as essential techniques for thinking with, at, and through text/s with more than one mind, voice, body.
(Midwest) History
Places. Rural. Urban. Liminal. Towns. Cities. Lakes. Factories. Strip malls. Plains and prairies. The Rust Belt. Industrial decline, postindustrial perseverance. The Suburbs: how they were made, and for whom. People. Your people. Race, its histories. Human detail. Victories. Sorrows. Failures and why they matter. Ideas from and images of the Midwest. Main Street. Small town. Everytown. Common man. Average American. Communities. White. Black. Native. Immigrant. Violence. How to reckon with it. The past. How to remember it. The future. How to make it.
Publishing
As a practice. The state of literary-cultural production. Issues related to past and present publishing trends and methods. What editing is and isn’t. The poetics of the press. Sending pitches. Receiving rejections. Publishing as labor. IP. Small press. Journals. Awards. Submittable. The MFA. The CIA. Views from inside and out.
Comparatives
This. As opposed to that.
Culture and Politics
Ecocriticism. Rust Belt Blues™. Radical ruminations, appropriately formatted. 21st century party machines. The rural left. The urban right. Labor. Its resurgence. Its future. Amazonification. Agglomeration. Accelerationism. Deceleration. Slow Cities. Farm-to-table. Quiet lives, and how (not) to live them.
Psyche of Literature
Death to the author; long live the character. Death to the character; long live autofiction. Insights, analysis, and unbridled curiosity about the interplay between psychology and storytelling. Unreliable narrators. Unreliable authors. Unreliable critics, whose burden it is to objectify her intuitions with all the intellectual rigor at her command. Nuances of motivation. Objectivity as no more than relative.
Literary Chronology
The enigma of time, and its hold on letters; cyclical patterns, and how they shape our literary landscapes. The détournement of literature and literary minds.
Visual Art
Modernism. Postmodernism. The built environment. Gallery openings. Painting. Design. Film. Documentary. Typography. Cartography. Photography. Placemaking. That mural you love.
The Book
As art object. As discursive subject. As monetized product. As product of production. As independent collaboration. Forms of the book and forms of reading. Book-making, -un-, -remaking. What reading is. What paper is. What screens are. Inks. How the damp finger flips, how the clammy hand holds. Book UI/UX. Promises of and challenges to the book and book culture: social, economic, technological, historic. Book design (inside and out) as text. Close consideration of aesthetic and material choices (or non-choices) of the made book as critical frame and entry to title, text, texture.
Lists
No listicle. No best. No round-up. The list as technique, gesture, interruption—yes.
Fiction
We're looking for prose fiction that meets the terms it sets for itself; more experimental work is welcome provided it does the same. Under 5,000 words is a general recommendation but not a hard limit.
At this time, we are interested particularly in stories that are formally tight and inventive; thematically, we would like to consider writing that abstractly or concretely prioritizes place (understood conceptually or geographically), especially if that place belongs to what we contentiously know as the Rust Belt or Midwest. These formal and thematic preferences are not requirements.
Send your writing, along with a short bio, to fiction@clereviewofbooks.com. Our current rates are $50 for online publication and $100 for print. We are not currently open for unsolicited submissions of poetry.