For 40 years, cream city review, UWM’S literary journal, has featured authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Bukowski, Aimee Bender and Audre Lorde before they were famous.
Affiliated with the English department and run by graduate students, faculty advisers and undergraduate interns, cream city review publishes poetry, fiction, non-fiction, visual art, reviews and interviews.
As the staff prepares to celebrate the journal’s 40th anniversary in the 2015-16 school year, plans include two fall events, said Michael Larson, a graduate student who serves as the development manager.
“One is a professionalization event. We’re going to bring in former staffers, such as former editor-in-chief Phong Nguyen, and talk to them about how they transitioned to either an academic setting or a different professional setting,” said Larson.
A second event, “cream city LIVE,” will feature authors and past contributors reading their works.
For more information on these events, visit creamcityreview.org.
The journal has a colorful history of themed issues and distinguished readership. Mary Zane Allen founded it in 1975, working with the UWM Student Union to create the magazine and a reading series.
The theme of the fall issue will be prison incarceration, according to Ching-In Chen, editor in chief during the 2014-15 school year.
“We got a community and university partnership grant to partner with Project Return to run creative writing workshops with incarcerated folks or formerly incarcerated folks. Incarceration is a huge issue in Milwaukee,” Chen said. “One of the readers that we’re bringing to campus, Randall Horton, was formerly incarcerated and is now a published writer, editor, and professor of creative writing.”
The cream city review staff organized conferences and workshops over the years, making Milwaukee a destination for writers honing their craft. Most recently, the staff organized a panel at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Minneapolis, which celebrated the publication of a folio focusing on indigenous writers. Writers included UWM professor and current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser, b: william bearhart, Laura Tohe, and UWM professor Margaret Noodin.
Staff members also work with local organizations, such as the Milwaukee Native American Literary Cooperative and the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network.
Even a journal with a distinguished history must modernize. Internal processes, such as receiving submissions, have been moved online, although it remains a print publication.
Writers may submit their work through an online form on the web site.
“It’s hard to say what the future holds, since the student staff sees a lot of turnover when people graduate,” Larson said. “We just hope that they’ll be able to keep finding young people who mature into really wonderful writers, and also keep in contact with established writers.”
The editors hope to increase alumni engagement and to strengthen the new development team, which is responsible for raising money to print issues
“This is a working lab,” said Loretta McCormick, managing editor. “I think it’s really necessary and important that a university that offers a doctorate in creative writing has a successful, vibrant lit journal. It’s necessary for the work we do and for networking and professionalization.”
Chen said former cream city review editors have gone on to edit other journals, and that students receive valuable experience. Networking with regional literary journals and creative writing programs, the journal has brought writers from several Midwestern universities and colleges to campus.
