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

Ally: From Noun to Verb

Robin D. G. Kelley talks with musician Vijay Iyer about systems of oppression, the responsibility of artists, and how jazz sells proximity to blackness to white people.

  • Robin D. G. Kelley
  • Vijay Iyer

An Arrangement

“He says that he needs to talk to you about something. You feel your stomach churn. He says that he is sorry.” Their relationship in flux, two men go on vacation in Palm Springs to try to patch things up.

  • Joseph Cassara

Three Poems

  • K. Iver

My cat paints her fur on with her tongue

Brother when I die
my ashes go to your house.
Confusion where to scatter
is all I’ll leave.
  • Craig Sullender

Rap on Trial

Prosecutors use defendants’ rap lyrics to win cases despite the flimsiest evidence. Behind this rests a unique paranoia around hip hop and a long history of criminalizing black art. 

  • Erik Nielson
  • Andrea L. Dennis

Zero Hour: The First Days of New Berlin

Thirty years after the Wall fell, the story of Berlin’s anarchist utopia.

  • Paul Hockenos

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Surely, Not

“What’s worse than any pain is being without him, and what’s worse even still is that it’s his idea to go.”

  • Amina Gautier

Abdel Halim Performs a Private Concert for My Mother

  • Hazem Fahmy

Just Grab

I decided to buy a banana.
It seemed like a good idea.
At the café, a banana.
A good idea, it seemed, so I couldn’t resist.

  • Cate Lycurgus

Announcing the Fall 2019 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest Winner and Finalists

Congratulations to Sabrina Helen Li!

  • Boston Review

Announcing the 2019 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest Winner and Finalists

Congratulations to C. X. Hua!

  • Boston Review

From the Editors: Allies

Our new issue asks: How do people who are not alike forge productive alliances?

  • Adam McGee
  • Ed Pavlić
  • Evie Shockley

Allies

On sale today, our new issue asks: How do people who are not alike forge productive alliances?

November 5, 1980

I have called, in my wasted youth, the concrete slabs
Of prison home. Awakened to guards keeping tabs
On my breath.
  • Reginald Dwayne Betts

Sultan of Hearts

The funeral of a family friend brings a musical legend from a bygone Iran back to town.

  • Matthew Jeffrey Vegari

Flannery’s Peacocks

  • Laren McClung

Get a Good Look at You

Sunil and Amy are just trying to find a Cambridge apartment they can afford when a call from Nairobi changes everything.

  • Jennifer Acker

Supervising the Woods

  • Calvin Bedient

Got Shakespeare?

When conservatives declare the death of the English major, they highlight the need for the critical thinking skills that English departments excel at teaching.

  • Jonathan Beecher Field

Polar Bodies

  • Katy Lederer

Shame

“She looks at her brilliant, talented mother and wants to cry.” A young Moroccan doctor makes an agonizing choice following a visit from her mother.

  • Maha Marouan

Two Poems

  • Khaled Mattawa

Two Poems

  • Virginia Konchan

The Country Without a Post Office

The tragically timely work of poet Agha Shahid Ali and his depiction of Kashmiri suffering.

  • Manan Kapoor
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