Tough Poets Review is a 501(c)(3) biannual print journal featuring critically engaged writers and artists. We publish irreverent work to generate conversations that go beyond exposition and instruction. We believe this approach can be applied to our collective experience to confront the world with defiant optimism. We are committed to remaining a print-only publication, never charging submission fees, and always paying our contributors.

Tough Poets Review, a labor-of-love publishing project that had been on the back burner for almost 10 years, finally became a reality in April 2025 following a series of conversations between soon-to-be collaborators and co-editors Rick Schober and Kathleen Cullen, both seeking a meaningful creative endeavor that would foster a communal effort. Our objective was to create a literary magazine showcasing quality, contemporary writing and visual art from contributors around the globe who enlighten and entertain through their honest exploration of social issues.

Editors

In addition to co-editing Tough Poets Review, Kathleen Cullen is a ghostwriter and copyeditor in the fields of academia, scientific and business research, and publishing. She holds degrees in linguistics from Brooklyn College and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before dropping out of a PhD program in linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center, she lectured as a teaching fellow at several senior colleges of the City University of New York. She teaches ESL to asylum seekers in NYC through The Campfire Project and volunteers doing food distribution with the organizations Coalition for the Homeless and Vision Urbana. kathleen@toughpoets.com

Rick Schober, co-editor of Tough Poets Review, has been publishing books as Tough Poets Press since 2015. His first literary endeavor, The Whole Shot: Collected Interviews With Gregory Corso, briefly held the number one spot on Amazon’s best sellers list in their Modern Literary Criticism category. His translation, the first-ever in English, of Nobel Prize recipient Knut Hamsun’s 1893 novel Editor Lynge (Redaktør Lynge) was cited by World Literature Today as one of the 75 notable translations of 2023. He holds a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. rick@toughpoets.com