Arts in Society

Boston Review’s Arts in Society section publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and criticism. It focuses on how the arts loosen the hold of convention, bear witness to injustice, provoke new ways of seeing the world, and speak to the most pressing political and civic concerns of our time.

Browse by Genre

Criticism, Poem, Memoir, Short Story

Browse Criticism by Topic

Fiction, Film and TV, Literature, Music, Poetry, Visual Art

Intramuros

Boston Review’s 12th Annual Short-Story Contest winner.

  • Lisa Chipongian

Book of Storms

  • Brian Kim Stefans

A State of Emergency

  • Calvin Bedient

from “A Palace of Pearls”

  • Jane Miller

Poet’s Sampler: Dorothea Lasky

  • Dorothea Lasky
  • Joshua Beckman

Redeeming Shylock

Michael Radford's The Merchant of Venice.
 

  • Alan A. Stone

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The Witness Takes a Stand

June Jordan wrote from her experience in a woman’s body and a dark skin, though never solely “as” or “for.”

  • Adrienne Rich

Microreview: David Sofield, Light Disguise

  • Dan Chiasson

The Premises of Grass

  • Eugene Ostashevsky

Robert Capa’s Hope

The photographer wanted to show what freedom, and the people who made it, looked like.

  • Susie Linfield

The Mark of Exile

An excerpt from The Cigar Roller. 

  • Pablo Medina

Microreview: Hank Lazer, Elegies & Vacations

  • Joshua Corey

The Origin of the Specious

  • Eugene Ostashevsky

RSVP

  • Debora Kuan

Underground Mausoleum

  • Kevin Prufer

Testament

  • Gustaf Sobin

Hizbullah’s New Face

In search of a Muslim democracy.

  • Helena Cobban

Microreview: Rae Armantrout, Up to Speed

  • Jeffrey Jullich

Microreview: Peter Streckfus, The Cuckoo

  • Garth Greenwell

Civic Pride

  • Sarah Manguso

Sunday Afternoon

  • Stephen Berg

Cloud of Witnesses

  • G.C. Waldrep

Corridor

  • Honor Moore

Disparu

  • Honor Moore
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