Bear Review | About

About

Bear Review is a reader’s stash of literary magazines in a hollow trunk in the woods.

Or, Bear Review is a journal in which readers wake to strange yet welcoming animal sounds outside their vestibules.

Or, Bear Review is a journal in which readers tend a seed bed for books.

And, Bear Review keeps a reader’s quiet fires stoked throughout the coldest nights.

Join us.

Read about us on Newpages and The Review Review.

Masthead

Co-founding Co-editors

Marcus Myers, originally from Hot Springs, Arkansas, lives in Kansas City, Missouri and works as an educator. A finalist in the 2019, 92nd Street Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest, his poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Common, The Cortland Review, The Florida Review, Hunger Mountain, Just Place, The Laurel Review, Mid-American Review, The National Poetry Review, RHINO, Salt Hill, Sink Review, Tar River Poetry, TYPO, Yes Poetry, Windfall Room and other journals. He has a chapbook Cloud Sanctum [A letter to my daughter] (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and is working on a full-length manuscript.

B Rivka Clifton is the author of Muzzle (forthcoming JackLeg Press). Their work can be found in: Pleiades, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Prairie Schooner, The Journal, and other such magazines. Rivka is an avid record collector and curator of curiosities.

Co-Editors

Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki has been published or has work forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and others. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. She has two chapbooks, Hush (Belle Point Press, 2022) and Bayou Sonata (NOLA DNA, 2023). You can find her on the web at www.nikkiummel.com.

Mason Wray's poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, New Ohio Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Diode, and elsewhere. A recipient of support from Bread Loaf and the Ruth Stone House, he holds an MFA in poetry from Ole Miss and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Anthony Procopio Ross writes, breathes, and teaches in Kansas City, Missouri. Anthony's poems appear in The Inflectionist Review, The McNeese Review, Laurel Review, and others. An MVICW Poetry Fellow in 2021 and an Andreas Creative Writing Fellow 2021-22, he graduated with his MFA in poetry at MNSU, Mankato. He has led creative writing workshops for adults with developmental disabilities, high school creative writing students, and people in coffee shops.

M. Cynthia Cheung is a practicing physician and the author of Common Disaster (Acre Books, 2025). Her poems can be found in The Baltimore Review, Four Way Review, Pleiades, RHINO, swamp pink, and others. A prior Idyllwild Arts Writer’s Week fellow, she serves on the judging panel for Baylor College of Medicine’s annual Michael E. DeBakey Medical Student Poetry Award.

Alex Tretbar is a Writers for Readers Fellow with the Kansas City Public Library, where he teaches free writing classes to the community. His poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.

Co-Editor, Web Editor

Mason D. Arnold serves as the lead designer for Laurel Review in Maryville, Missouri, where he also attends college at Northwest Missouri State University as a graduate student. He has had work published in Medium Weight Forks and Sagebrush Review.