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
The Pruner’s Tale
An ancient pilgrimage route inspires a project of cooperative storytelling which pairs writers with detained immigrants, such as the Mexican horticulturalist in this story.
Hyman Bloom’s Messy Bodies
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ retrospective of Hyman Bloom offers visitors the chance to engage with work that exemplifies how art can foster justice-minded, ethical looking.
Emily Dickinson Escapes
Until recent decades, Dickinson was most often depicted as a sentimental spinster or reclusive eccentric. A new biography and TV show reveal instead a self-aware artist who created a life that defied the limits placed on women.
Painting the New York Times
An interview with Nicky Nodjoumi—one of Iran’s greatest artists, in exile since 1980.
Poetry and Fiction Contests
Enter for your chance to win $1,000 and publication in Boston Review. Plus, entry is free to all those outside of the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe.
The Private History of Ethiopia’s Wars
Maaza Mengiste’s novels reject grand narratives, offering uncommonly intimate glimpses of dictatorship and displacement.
Elizabeth Hand’s Curious Toys
Celebrated novelists John Crowley and Elizabeth Hand discuss Hand’s new novel and the ways that historical fiction can and cannot answer our questions about the past.
The Bird at the Window
Since 1970 North America has lost 29 percent of its bird population. New York City alone kills almost a quarter of a million birds each year. More than most people, poets have tried to respond to these unremarked—and mostly preventable—deaths.
Herman Melville the Poet
The author of Moby Dick is best known for his novels, but he devoted the second half of his life to writing poetry.
Walks in the Park: On the Foreignness of the Socialist Past
December 22 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Romanian socialist state of Nicolae Ceaușescu. In a work of memoir, Nachescu recalls growing up under communism and wonders about the world Romanians hoped would follow its fall.
AI’s Human Problem
Two new books about machine creativity mostly reveal how little appreciation we still have for the full range of human creativity.
László Krasznahorkai’s Catastrophic Harmonies
The winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature serves up an apocalyptic vision of Hungarian society.
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