newohioreview.org/2026/02/27/w... Artwork by Tamizh Ponni VP.

Congratulations to our winners, who will be published in issue 37!

NOR is happy to relay the publication of Ohio University Press's newest poetry collection Midsummer Night's Toast by Mamie Morgan. The book is the winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize! www.ohioswallow.com/978082142668...

newohioreview.org/2026/02/27/h... Artwork by Thad DeVassie

Lit Fest continues today: 10a: A Lecture by George Bilgere (The Athena Cinema) 11a: A Lecture by Hala Alyan (The Athena Cinema) 7:30p: A Reading by Hala Alyan (Walter Hall Rotunda) 8:30p: A Reading by Jeff VanderMeer (Walter Hall Rotunda)

"At four-thirty a.m., I contemplate / how to catch the bright white moon."--"Trying" by Kim Farrar, Winter Online Exclusive. Art by Alex Brice. newohioreview.org/2025/10/26/t...

"Parents and grandparents died, but the seeds continued. If the seed was lost, we were lost."--"Acres of Gold" by Katharine Wiegele, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/10/27/e...

You can say a prairie fits into a plain, / but not the other way around.--"Landscape as Restoration" by Hannah Smith, Winter Online Exclusive. Artwork by Madeline Stowe. newohioreview.org/2025/10/27/l...

Thank you @newohioreview.bsky.social For including this poem. newohioreview.org/2025/11/21/t...

There's about a month left to submit to our big contest. Our submission fee gets you a year of NOR in your mailbox. Submit today and tell your friends.

In my dream they want to wash you, / lather you up and rinse away  / all grit, all gravel gathered / in the quick of your claws . . .--"Elegy" by S. J. Stover, Winter Online Edition. newohioreview.org/2025/10/28/e...

I played “Losing My Religion” on repeat. I voted.  / I went to bed each night with yesterday’s cold  / coffee ringing the coffee table.--"Self-Portrait at Thirty-Three" by S.J. Stover. Featured art by Rachel Hall. newohioreview.org/2025/10/29/s...

"One cannot not live / by bread alone you say.  / Okay, so / I will live by  / sentences, tenuous, / precious, line by line, / one rhyme / at a time."--"A Prayer" by S.J. Stover, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/10/30/a...

“Being passed over isn’t a judgment of you as a writer. ...This perhaps just wasn’t the right time to submit your piece about large, white birds.” Damien Cowger, managing editor of New Ohio Review, offers an editor’s perspective on rejection: at.pw.org/AERCowger

"They’d agreed to staying with each other to the end, and their ashes were to be buried together."--"The Canyon of Unknown Water" by Kent Nelson, Winter Online Exclusive Artwork by Alex Brice. newohioreview.org/2025/10/31/t...

We're here!

The threadbare jacket that I wear is made of / Woven catastrophe.-- from "Fly on the Wall" by Wes Civilz, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/01/f...

Today will be a paradise if I  / Can manage to control the many hells / I’m made of.--"Difficulties" by Wes Civilz, Winter Online Exclusive. Featured Art by Rachel Hall newohioreview.org/2025/11/02/d...

Plastic surgeons aren’t held in particularly high regard—by the public or our fellow physicians.--"Addicted to Plastic" by Victor McConnell, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/03/a...

I wonder if she says a prayer before / she bustles into the room, all smiles and sweet / accented English, tongue a rolling horse / in a field of Russian consonants.--"The Church of the Dermatologist" by Amy Miller, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/04/t...

"I’d always meant to tell Emma about the violence in the world. Instead, we jointly binged a stream of true crime, horror, and noir. I let the shows do the work."--"Naturism" by Michelle Lombardo, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/05/n...

"People weren’t meant to work behind a desk. People weren’t meant to be cogs in a machine."--"Vernonox" by Rick Andrews, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/06/v...

"This year we’re kicking underwire to the curb. / This year we’re breaking up with cup spillage. "--"The Algorithm Sells Me a New Bra" by @emilyabanks.bsky.social, Winter Online Exclusive Featured art: "Embrace" by Rachel Hall. newohioreview.org/2025/11/07/t...

"I can make anyone / tell me everything / I want to hear / for a night."--"Riddle" by @emilyabanks.bsky.social newohioreview.org/2025/11/08/r...

"They had barely finished the introductions when he asked about the war. The endgame, the likely victor, things no Ukrainian cared to discuss with strangers"--"Mask 13" by Annemarie Neary , Winter Online Exclusive. Featured art by Rachel Hall. newohioreview.org/2025/11/09/m...

"This morning in January, the men on the street were  / wheeling one of the Wise Men into a truck, on a dolly,  / just like that."--"Nativity" by Theo Jasper. newohioreview.org/2025/11/10/n...

"I feel small at the bottom of the gray-blue staircase, / the one where she didn’t die, even when I visit it in my memory."--"Duplex (Gray-blue Staircase)" by Theo Jasper, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/11/d...

"I smoothed the dress across my chest as the Pride Parade smiled, danced, and sang its way past San Francisco City Hall."--"Pride" by R.M. Harper, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/12/p...

"I am her only eating disorder patient—a peculiar case in a weight loss clinic that masquerades as a wellness program."--"Original Sin" by Anna Davis Abel. Featured Art: “Self-Portrait” by Rachel Hall newohioreview.org/2025/11/13/o...

". . . he told me the gap in my front teeth, though strange, / had an element of beauty."--"A Space Unfilled" by Theresa Burns, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/14/a...

"Outside, the moon is a wooden button through its slit of Gaelic wool."--"Irish Nocturne" by Derek Jon Dickinson, Winter Online Exclusive. Featured Art: “Grass Pathway” by Madelyn Bartolone. newohioreview.org/2025/11/15/i...

"The world will work to twirl girls into witches, or they will twirl themselves into witches, or they will twirl and turn away from the witch they could be . . ."--"Angling" by Matt Miller. Art by Alex Brice newohioreview.org/2025/11/16/e...

"One night twenty years later, among cardboard boxes fuzzy with dust in the basement of my mom’s final house, I find a tennis racket. I’m puzzled."--"Trick of the Light" by Jessica Jo Staricka, Winter Online Exclusive. Artwork by Alex Brice. newohioreview.org/2025/11/17/t...

"But Mark had a hoop / with a chain net, the post planted right in his backyard, its slick metal / gleaming among his mother’s azaleas / and lilyturfs."--"Basketball" by Christopher Shipman, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/18/b...

"If she wasn’t so afraid, it would have been funny, spying on this creature demolishing their yard as if it were an inconsiderate neighbor."--"Animal Control" by @annasheffer.bsky.social, Winter Online Exclusive. Featured Art: "The Bride" by Alex Brice. newohioreview.org/2025/11/19/a...

"If you swear you are / his last last drink, then I will pay a cantor / and a priest. Father you, as I have failed / to father him."--"A Toast to My Son's Last Drink" by @roddwhelpley.bsky.social, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/20/a...

"There are questions—  / painful—for which no one seeks an answer,  / only theories"--"The Uncertainty Principle" by Rodd Whelpley, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/21/t...

NOR contributor Kimberly Johnson is reading on the campus of Ohio University tonight at 7:30p in Galbreath Chapel! calendar.ohio.edu/event/2025-2...

It is a Wednesday when I ask for help in the kitchen, a Tuesday night for my mother.--"Far From a Mother" by Madeline Simms, Winter Online Exclusive Featured art: “Eye of Horus” by Ryan Davis newohioreview.org/2025/11/22/e...

"We’re three bites into not-quite-Christmas pie when my mother breaks into the epic tale of Dad leaving her for another woman."--"The News from North Korea" by @jamesjmarino.bsky.social, Winter Online Exclusive. newohioreview.org/2025/11/23/t...

"…oh daughter are you  in darkness or light he says this is it  i am done after dialysis & within days   his head wilts cold into your palms…"--"The Knot" by Sarah Suhr, Winter Online Exclusive. Featured Art by Mallory Stowe. newohioreview.org/2025/11/25/t...

"No matter how great the devastation,   it requires a small act of resistance for scale."--"Grief in the Potting Shed" by Allisa Cherry. Featured art: "Lily, Out of Breath" by Mallory Stowe. newohioreview.org/2025/11/26/g...

“I shrink the size of the image. Now I feel that it reveals too much, even though that was precisely my intention when I photographed my grandmother.”—“The Lines, The Borders” by Julia Ferry. newohioreview.org/2025/11/27/e...

My 98-year-old father steals cars / every day. It’s not uncommon / for him to take another at night, too. —“Joy Riders” by Michael Mark, Winter Online Exclusive. Artwork by Mallory Stowe. newohioreview.org/2025/11/28/j...

. . . to fight / against the expectations of pale neighbors, / against the recklessness of their youth, / against driving I-80 ninety miles an hour / and the dour white face that sounds the siren.--"Dedication for a Plot of Ground" by Matthew Williams, Winter Online Exclusive

"My students wear the name Nirvana and don’t know the band."--"Samsara" by Matthew Williams, Winter Online issue. newohioreview.org/2025/11/30/s...

We invite you to submit your best work to our 2026 contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Three prizes of $1,500 each and publication in New Ohio Review will be awarded for a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. Submit at newohiorewiew.org