Cream City

Cream City

The Cream City Review is a nonprofit journal produced with help from, among other places, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I first became aware of this journal after seeing Haines Eason leave a short note about some of his poems that will be published there (side note, Haines won the PSA chapbook contest last year and his poems, well, are often very good).

I've written about journals from time to time here, and I think The Cream City Review needs to be highlighted for a few things that it does well / could do better. First, they have been publishing poets and writers since 1975 and today have a large staff that is kept busy with numerous submissions. Second, they have an annual literary prize for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction (side note, Haines won this year's poetry prize). Third, the journal is large and diverse, putting out over 200 pages of material twice a year, and as of 2008 eight, CCR even includes comics.

On the down-side, however, navigating their website to find past material and not just lists of past contributors is difficult. I often find reading an issue from a year ago or two years ago, though not an exact gauge of the editors' tastes because staff change occasionally, at least something to help me decide whether I want to submit my own work, buy a subscription, or recommend the journal to someone I think would like it. CCR is a print journal, so it's no surprise that their focus is on producing a solid print issue. On the other hand, I found and would most likely only have found CCR online.

So, if you are interested in reading more about Cream City Review, follow the links.

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