Cherry Tree’s aesthetic champions image-rich, sonically adventurous poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction which showcase whimsy and wit alongside risk and urgency. In 2016, they introduced “Literary Shade,” a section featuring work that responds to and challenges oppressive social structures. Their name recalls the apocryphal story of George Washington’s ax, and they encourage writers to craft new and inventive ways to critique, to reimagine, and to chop away at literary traditions.