Cutleaf publishes a new issue online every other week throughout the year. A project of EastOver Press, Cutleaf seeks work that responds to our common experience and reflects our differences. We are interested in work by all writers, especially those historically underrepresented in literary publishing. We welcome unsolicited original prose (both literary nonfiction and fiction) and poetry from established and emerging writers during our open submission windows.
Keith Pilapil Lesmeister
Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of Mississippi River Museum (WTAW Press) and We Could’ve Been Happy Here (MG Press). He is also series editor of The EastOver Anthology of Rural Stories: Writers of Color. His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Gettysburg Review, New Stories from the Midwest, North American Review, Slice Magazine, and many others. His nonfiction has appeared in River Teeth, Sycamore Review, The Good Men Project, Tin House Open Bar, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at Northeast Iowa Community College. Visit his website at keithlesmeister.com.
Denton Loving
Denton Loving’s third collection of poems is Feller, published by Mercer University Press. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His fiction, poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The Kenyon Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Ecotone. Visit his website at dentonloving.com
Kelly March
Kelly March is a writer in North Carolina. A former newspaper reporter and editor, she is currently working on her first collection of essays.
Walter M. Robinson
Walter M. Robinson is a writer and physician in Massachusetts. His essay collection, What Cannot Be Undone, won the 2020 River Teeth Book Prize and was published by University of New Mexico Press in 2022. His recent essays appear in wildness, Months To Years, The Sun, The Literary Review, and Harvard Review. Visit his website at wmrobinson.com.
Sarah Balakrishnan
Tayyba Maya Kanwal
Monic Ductan
Monic Ductan teaches fiction writing and African American literature at Tennessee Tech University. Monic’s book, a loosely linked collection of stories called Daughters of Muscadine (2023), focuses on working-class black women, estrangement, and family life in rural Georgia. Muscadine won the Weatherford Award and also the Tennessee Book Award. The Georgia Center for the Book included Muscadine on its list, “Books All Georgians Should Read” in 2024. Monic is also the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission grant in fiction and a Walter Dakin fellowship in fiction from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her new project is an in-progress novel about a 9-1-1 dispatcher uncovering police corruption in a small, Southern town. Monicductan.com is her website.
Arah Ko
Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai’i, the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025), and the chapbook Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2026). Her fiction was anthologized in the Eastover Press Anthology of Rural Writers of Color and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of Net, and Best New Poets. Her recent writing appears in Ninth Letter, Split Lip Magazine, River Styx, Waxwing, The Threepenny Review, The Los Angeles Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. Catch her at arahko.com.
Kara McKeever
Kara McKeever is a writer, editor, and visual artist in Kansas City, Missouri. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, North American Review, Cimarron Review, Cutleaf, Bear Review, Contemporary Collage Magazine, UPPERCASE, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram or at www.karamckeever.com.
Kate Anson
Colson Cruciani
Holly-Anne Grell
Eliana Harris
Summer Knight
Brenna Lockwood
Margo McCall
Sidney Mitchell
Kayla Petersen
B. Nathaniel Steelman
Laura Taylor
Kylie Ayn Yockey
Kylie Ayn Yockey is a literary creative living in Canada. She earned her Master’s in Writing from Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann School of Writing, and she edits for Blood Tree Literature and Chaotic Merge Magazine. Her publication history, marketing portfolio, and further editorial work can be found at www.kylieaynyockey.com.
Christopher Castellani
Jasmin Darznik
Libby Flores
Jill McCorkle
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Joan Wickersham
Paul Yoon
If you’d like to get in touch, send us an email and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.
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