Cry Baby

In the editor’s note to the “Cry Baby” issue of The Literary Review, Minna Proctor writes about how she has always had a thick skin: “It was a philosophical position: crying was for babies. Crying made you weak. My calculated clear-eyed aspiration was to be strong. And so I was doctrinaire, even a little pathological, about not crying.” She goes on to say that putting out that front means that everyone assumes you are okay, and nobody comes in to help. She writes that she was ambivalent about the theme, but the titled was “accidentally included in [the] roster two years about by an intern, and before [she] had the chance to erase it, there was a ticker-tape swell of enthusiasm from the rest of the editorial staff,” that she let it stand. And now, the issue embodies that ambivalence: “Like a love song that calls you names because you are a terrible, inexperienced, transparently manipulative cry-er, but loves you anyway.”

The issue features writing from Jody Azzouni, Elizabeth Cantwell, Cynthia Cruz, Dan Gutstein, Heather Hartley, David Luoma, Carrie Messenger, Jerry Whitus, Alex Cigale, Heather Higle, H.L. Hix, and more.