Location: Philadelphia Metro, PA
Contact: info@phillychapbookreview.org
Journal ISSN: 2995-6447
Subject: poetry, chapbooks, criticism, review, interview
Ownership: P. Aiden Hunt
Philly Poetry Chapbook Review (PCR) is a nonprofit publication that publishes under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND). All content is free, ad-free, and anyone can republish for noncommercial purposes, as long as license rules are followed. If you use our material on the internet, please include a link back to the original article.
We publish journal content on a rolling, weekly schedule, with new content mainly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, we divide Philly Poetry Chapbook Review into four seasonal issues per year for archival purposes. New issues begin in January (Winter), April (Spring), July (Summer), October (Fall).
We update the PCR Blog daily on weekdays as pieces are ready.
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Staff
Aiden Hunt, Editor
P. Aiden Hunt is a neurodivergent and disabled editor, poet, journalist and publisher. He’s also a literary critic and a proud member of the National Book Critics Circle. His critical writing has been published by The Rumpus, Fugue, On the Seawall, Tupelo Quarterly, Jacket2 and The Adroit Journal, among other venues.
Aiden has created and edited three prior online publications: an activist blog and two cannabis policy news sites. The last of these, Profiles in Legalization, was syndicated by Newstex and NewsBank.
Shelli Rottschafer, Poetry Reader
Contributor: Issues 6, 7 (Review/Poetry)
Poet, Educator, and Advocate Shelli Rottschafer (she/her/ella) completed her doctorate from the University of New Mexico in 2005 in Latin American Contemporary Literature. From 2006 until 2023 Rottschafer taught Spanish at a small liberal arts college in Michigan. Summer 2023 she began her low-residency MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry at Western Colorado University, Gunnison. She resides in Louisville, Colorado & El Prado, Nuevo México with her partner and rescue pup.
Meet Our Contributor: Shelli Rottschafer
D.W. Baker, Poetry Reader
Contributor: Issue 7 (Review)
D.W. Baker is a poet, editor, and teacher from Saint Petersburg, Florida. His poetry appears in Identity Theory, ballast, and Sundog Lit, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He reads for several mastheads including Variant Lit and Libre.
Meet Our Contributor: D.W. Baker
Contributors
Gerald Yelle, Issue 10 (Poetry)
Gerald Yelle has worked in restaurants, factories, schools and offices. His books include The Holyoke Diaries (Future Cycle, 2014), Dreaming Alone and with Others (Future Cycle, 2023), the bored and Evolution for the Hell of It (Alien Buddha, 2025). His chapbooks include No Place I Would Rather Be (Finishing Line, 2021) and A Box of Rooms (Bottlecap, 2022). He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Gray Davidson Carroll, Issue 10 (Review)
Gray Davidson Carroll is a white, non-binary writer, dancer, singer, cold water plunger and (self-proclaimed) hot chocolate alchemist hailing from Brooklyn by way of western Massachusetts and other strange and forgotten places. They are the author of the poetry chapbook Waterfall of Thanks (Bottlecap Press, 2023), and their work has further appeared in Rattle, The Common, ONLY POEMS, and elsewhere. They are a former Brooklyn Poets Fellow, and are currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at NYU.
Bryana Fern, Issue 10 (Poetry)
Bryana Fern received her PhD from the Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. Her stories, essays, and poems have been published in Sequestrum, Harpur Palate, Sou’wester, Rock & Sling, Rappahannock Review, The Argyle, Redactions, South 85, and Nomad. She has also published work in the Washington Review of Books and has a critical article chapter in McFarland’s Star Trek: the Feminist Frontier.
Makena Metz, Issue 9 (Poetry)
Makena Metz is a writer & songwriter for the page, screen, and stage. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from Chapman University. Her prose and poetry have been published with The Literary Hatchet, The Blunt Space, The Mid-Atlantic Review, Boudin, The Fantastic Other, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Arkana, Strange Horizons, and many more
Alex Carrigan, Issue 9 (Review)
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has appeared in SoFloPoJo, Cotton Xenomorph, Bullshit Lit, HAD, fifth wheel press, and more.
Meet Our Contributor: Alex Carrigan
Robin Arble, Issue 9 (Poetry)
Robin Arble’s poems have appeared in 2River, Passages North, Poetry Online, and Up The Staircase Quarterly, among others. She studied writing and literature at Hampshire College and lives in New York.
Meet Our Contributor: Robin Arble
Alexandra Meyer, Issue 9 (Poetry)
Alexandra Meyer is a poet from Wichita, Kansas. Her writing is shaped by growing up in a female-dominated household with four sisters, Kansas wildlife, and the conversations around her. She studied English at the University of Kansas and continues to write while holding free writing classes for her community.
Meet Our Contributor: Alexandra Meyer
Allison Whittenberg, Issue 9 (Poetry)
Allison Whittenberg is an award-winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, and New Orleans Review. Whittenberg is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee. They Were Horrible Cooks is her collection of poetry.
Killing the Father of Our Country is her lastest novel.
William Doreski, Issue 9 (Poetry)
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. 2024). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.
Laynie Browne, Issue 9 (Poetry)
Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, artist, editor and teacher. Her recent books of poetry include: Everyone & Her Resemblances (Pamenar, 2024), Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar 2023), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books, 2022). In 2024 a solo show of her collage titled “On the Way to the Filmic Woods” was exhibited at the Brodsky Gallery at Kelly Writer’s House. She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Meet Our Contributor: Laynie Browne
Victoria Korth, Issue 8 (Poetry)
Victoria Korth’s work has appeared in Nine Mile Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, Stone Canoe, Ocean State Review, Tar River Poetry, Barrow Street and widely elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2020 and the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2024. She is the author of Cord Color (2015) and Tacking Stitch (2022), Finishing Line Press and holds an MFA from The Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She is also a practicing psychiatrist living in upstate New York.
Bart Edelman, Issue 8 (Poetry)
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). Most recently, he has taught in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others.
Christa Fairbrother, Issue 8 (Poetry)
Christa Fairbrother, MA, has had poetry in Arc, Epiphany, Pleiades, and Salamander, among others. Currently, she’s Gulfport, Florida’s poet laureate, and she’s been a finalist for the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize, The Prose Poem Competition, The Pangea Prize, and was a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Meet Our Contributor: Christa Fairbrother
Sarah E N Kohrs, Issue 8 (Poetry)
Sarah E N Kohrs writes to grapple with human injustices, as much as to savor fireflies. She has 75+ poems in journals worldwide, including Arboreal, Culinary Origami, Elevation Review, Flyway, Kitchen Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, Lucky Jefferson, Poetry Society of Virginia anthologies, West Trade Review. She’s received numerous honors, including the Peter K. Hixson Award in poetry. Her chapbook, Chameleon Sky, won the 2022 Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Award. Surrounded by Shenandoah Valley, Va, mountains on land that belonged to the Manahoac, SENK is also a photographer, potter, and educator. She has a BA from The College of Wooster, Oh.
Meet Our Contributor: Sarah E N Kohrs
Rick Mullin, Issue 8 (Review)
Rick Mullin is a painter and poet living in Northern New Jersey. His books include Soutine (Dos Madres Press, 2012), Huncke (second edition, Exot Press, 2021), and Grotesque Singers (Dos Madres Press, 2025).
Jonathan Fletcher, Issue 8 (Poetry)
Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which his debut chapbook, This is My Body, was published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Meet Our Contributor: Jonathan Fletcher
Jeanne Bamforth, Issue 7 (Poetry)
Jeanne L. Bamforth lives and writes on Merrymeeting Bay, an inland confluence of six rivers near the coast of Maine. She has had poems published in Balancing Act 2, an Anthology of Poems by Maine Women (Littoral Books), Northern New England Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Willows Wept Review.
Sarena Tien, Issue 7 (Poetry)
Sarena Tien is a queer Chinese American writer and doctor (the PhD kind). Once upon a time, she used to be so shy that two teachers argued whether she was a “low talker” or “no talker,” but she’s since learned how to scream. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Rumpus, Snarl, The B’K, and Sylvia.
Meet Our Contributor: Sarena Tien
Adele Ross, Issue 7 (Poetry)
A poet hailing from Cincinnati, OH, Adele Ross is a recent graduate from Oberlin College, where they studied writing and literature in both English and German. They were an honorable mention for Oberlin’s annual Emma Howell Poetry Prize.
Natalie Marino, Issue 7 (Poetry)
Natalie Marino is a poet and practicing physician. Her work appears in Heavy Feather Review, Pleiades, Rust & Moth, Salt Hill, wildness and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Under Memories of Stars (Finishing Line Press, 2023). She lives in California.
Wendell Hawken, Issue 7 (Poetry)
Wendell Hawken (she/her) earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers. Publications include four chapbooks and five full collections. Hawken was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Millwood VA, an unincorporated quirky village in the northern Shenandoah Valley where she lives.
Meet Our Contributor: Wendell Hawken
A.L. Nielsen, Issue 7 (Poetry)
A.L. Nielsen’s books of poetry include Heat Strings, Evacuation Routes, Stepping Razor, VEXT, A Brand New Beggar, Tray, Back Pages: Selected Poems and Spider Cone, among others. At present he is completing a poetry collection titled Hard Gospel. He was the first recipient of the Larry Neal Award for poetry, and has also received the Darwin Turner Award, the Josephine Miles Award, the SAMLA Studies award and Gertrude Stein awards. He is the author of the scholarly works Reading Race, Writing between the Lines, C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction, Black Chant, Integral Music and The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka. He has co-edited two anthologies of innovative poetry by African American artists, as well as The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas. Recently retired from a career as an educator, he has taught at George Washington University, Howard University, San Jose State University, UCLA, Loyola Marymount University, Penn State University and the Central China Normal University, as well as in the Washington D.C. public schools. He now lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with his wife, Dr. Anna Everett.
Past Contributors
Mike Bagwell, Issue 1 (Review)
C. M. Crockford, Issues 1, 2, 4 (Review)
Drishya, Issues 2, 4 (Review)
Francesca Leader, Issue 1 (Review)
PCR welcomes unsolicited chapbook reviews year-round. We’re only interested in poets and poetics right now. Please read our guidelines fully before submitting pitches. PCR is a curated journal. We purchase first serial rights, which revert one month after publication, and non-exclusive archival and syndication rights.