Places to submit

Cleaver Magazine

“Cleaver” publishes craft essays on writerly topics. If you are a poet, fiction writer, essayist, or graphic narrative artist and would like to propose a craft essay, contact the editors with a query before submitting. Guidelines: offer a reaction to or exploration of one’s personal experience as a prose writer/artist/creative; pieces that delve into something you’ve either found compelling, learned along the way, figured out, gotten obsessed with, found surprising, and want to share with other writers. Quirky is okay. Nothing too scholarly/academic/ teacher-y. Aim for between 800 and 2000 words. “Riding West Towards The Woods” by Deb Fenwick is a sample of the type of writing “Cleaver” is looking for.

Sparks

All Summer Long

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. All Summer Long  By Deb Fenwick All summer long, busy house sparrows flit in the eaves of our house. Each morning, they collect tiny twigs and things I rarely notice from the ground and end up making a life with them. Seedlings sprout and reach toward a warm, welcoming sky.  Children ride bikes and screech with delight. No hands! Look at me! Watch! When the sun sets at nine o’clock, those same children, liberated from the rigidity of school night routines, line up for ice cream with wide, wild eyes as fireflies send signals across the garden. The crickets just keep chirping.  All summer long, there’s lake swimming in midwestern waters that have been warmed by the sun. And better still, there’s night swimming where a body, unfettered by the weight of gravity,  gets its chance…

Sparks

Network

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. Network By Deb Fenwick It’s new and improved! Try it! Don’t miss this opportunity.  Buy now. No, not goodbye now. But look at this good buy, now! Amazon Prime straight to your door in 24 hours, guaranteed. And, if all goes well, gig workers will deliver your Starbucks just as your DoorDash lunch is arriving. Thank goodness for the bits and bytes that zoom unseen through your Wi-Fi and into a fiber-optic network that traverses the globe. It’s fast. And you are the master of your point-and-click world. Plants have a dynamic unseen life beneath the soil. In late autumn, perennials slowly go into a state of dormancy in response to cold weather and shorter daylight hours. Gradually, leaves and stalks disappear. Life continues underground, and roots go into a potent winter slumber. In spring, in…

Sparks

Post-Pandemic Songs and Second Chances

By Deb Fenwick After fifteen months, it’s time to soar. A hundred, a thousand, millions of voices are calling, inviting us to share in a common song. There’s a brilliant bright light and an invitation to hope after all the darkness—to hope and to imagine possibilities. It’s a resonant call to lift off and soar. And it originates from that other place.  It’s a place of community where we remember our interconnectedness. It’s a place where there’s an agreement to work together to make something that transcends what one individual, no matter how magnificent, can do on their own. It’s a place where you work toward something with others, and it takes on its own magic. You can see it in a choir’s chorus or a road crew building a bridge. It’s there as an emergency room team saves a life, and as food pantry volunteers pack boxes. It’s that…

Sparks

Waking Up on a Spring Morning

By Deb Fenwick On spring mornings, after a long brittle winter, the truth is everywhere. It begins at dawn. Not that I wake up that early anymore. These days, I sleep until the sun is high in the warm sky. But I remember thirty years of sunrise drives—drives where a glowing, golden-pink ribbon stretched languidly across Lake Michigan. Like it had all the time in the world. Unhurried. Unlike me. The sky had no need to rush to work. To meet deadlines. To prove its worth. From the driver’s seat, I watched the morning clouds, dumbstruck some days, because they seemed to delight in their own essence. Those early morning skies seemed, somehow, to speak to something truer than the life I was living at the time. In those days, I didn’t have time for walks where I watched the earth wake up to its magnificent self. The glory song…