Cincinnati Review

For more literary nonfiction from Issue 20.2, order now in our online store. Digital copies are only $5.

You think summers in New York are humid now, but this is nothing compared to 1983. That year the air was full of heavy metals. Headless bodies in topless bars, the first AIDS vigil, candle flames seizing in a night that felt like wet fleece. When de Kooning’s Seated Woman got up and walked away …

Finally, fifteen months after he died, I get my son’s death certificate in the mail. There it is: the manner of his death, the time, date, place, and also his name. It’s misspelled, both first and last. His middle name they got right. * “I like the name, you like the name. But you just …

Lisa Alletson’s “Apocalypse” is perfect both for the spooky season and for the anxious writer in all seasons.

Molly Sentell Haile’s flash fiction story, “Sea of Love,” ponders how quickly the natural world and external forces can breach the safeguards of home and family.

The body was held at the Beer, Wine, Worms shack on the back side of the lake where men recreated without their women.

Three interwoven flash essays about the south that move from a sense of menace to hope.

In the prose poem “Blue Yarn,” Jackie Craven unsettles our understanding of domestic spaces.