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 Origins of Sexual Healing
How the song emerged from Gaye’s struggles with faith, drug addiction, and childhood abuse.
The Other Toni Morrison
A timely new documentary celebrates Morrison’s novels but downplays the enduring power of her work as an editor and essayist.
Three Poems
When you beat my brother’s face with a sack of potatoes, when he bruised & you drew the burlap back for blood, did you smell lilac?
A World of Electric Children
Science fiction author Ted Chiang wrote the story for the Academy Award–winning film Arrival. Now his new collection of short stories gives us further glimpses of possible futures.
Race in Black and White
Slavery and the Civil War were central to the development of photography as both a technology and an art.
Last Day
On the day the Earth is supposed to end, Karen is entrusted to open the YMCA. An excerpt from New York Times bestseller Ruta’s new novel.
Looking for Solidarity
The work of Haitian-Dominican poet Jacques Viau Renaud recalls a time when the two sides of the Caribbean island were united by their visions for an equal society.
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