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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 Creative Writing by Genre

Browse Essays & Reviews by Topic

Images seized from enslaved people are not private property to be owned but ancestors to be cared for.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Poetry
Ocean Vuong

A short story, winner of the Caine Prize.

NoViolet Bulawayo
Poetry

My grandmother tells me she loved you fiercely
in the way she reaches for me when your name
is spoken.

Alexis V. Jackson

Thelonious Monk lost (and found) in Paris.

Robin D. G. Kelley
Poetry

The stones are endlessly weeping in the dark. Or is it
the bird-chatter of rain. O darling, are you writing
another poem about trees? No, not trees but ghosts
that live on trees and their legend of never-let-gos.

Njoku Nonso
Fiction

The world never really ended. An apocalypse wasn’t an end so much as a change of state, ice into water.

Sascha Stronach

What does it mean for those living in the diaspora to remain attached to the land they left behind?

Kenda Mutongi
Fiction

“I will be a tightrope walker,” she said, “and I will walk across the air to you.”

Michael T. Powers
Fiction

“Most were drills. Pilots weren’t to know which were the real deal. They were not to think of the lethal effects of their duty.” A pilot is pulled aside by a desperate woman seeking help.

Nicholas Maistros
Fiction

This is my version of the story, but I will illuminate only a corner of it, one that ran parallel to and underneath it, revealing what was left in its wake.

Ian Maxton
Fiction

“Abroadness became my obsession.” When a young Nigerian girl is invited to go live with her uncle in Canada, it sets in motion a peculiar friendship with someone she has long envied.

Jane Kalu
Fiction

“You can’t go to Mass like that.” A woman’s mother wakes up dramatically transformed, leading to a reappraisal of their relationships.

Jamie Figueroa
Poetry

When you were / in the Everglades we canoed from Flamingo and through the canals.

Leah Claire Kaminski
Poetry

My feet moved down another street / and I saw the shape they would draw / on the map in my mind.

Monica Cure
Poetry

Look at my heartbeat / and its consequence, / that cup warm on my palm

Brandi Nicole Martin

In her scholarship, mentoring, and activism, Farah Jasmine Griffin brings a praxis of radical love to an unequal academy.

Robin D. G. Kelley
Poetry

How would I know / when I’m empty and quiet like breath?

Jeff William Acosta

Reflecting on three monumental works of modernism a hundred years on.

Johanna Winant
Poetry

But I do miss the hymns, / the small, hard apples with their dimpled skin. I do miss / things.

Hannah Craig
Poetry

As a student, I stitched / a cadaver together / while my professor / said you must / be a predator . . .

Brian Clifton
Fiction

“She stuffed spinach in her mouth until her teeth were a hayish green.” A woman’s extreme diet earns praise from church friends but concern from her family.

Olivia Cheng

László Krasznahorkai’s latest novel reflects on the power of the surveillance state through the perspective of a librarian who wishes to lock up all books.

Tadhg Larabee

Congratulations to Parashar Kulkarni!

Boston Review

Congratulations to Njoku Nonso!

Boston Review
Poetry

I ain’t dead and in this form, / I can matrix my way out of your bullet.

Isha Camara
Fiction

“When I flick the light on, my ceiling hangs open, a wide mouth.” After her bedroom springs a leak, an English professor tries to help a struggling student.

Katrina Prow

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Most Read

Robin D. G. Kelley
Margaret Atwood, Junot Díaz

Popular Authors

Prolific poet and critic, winner of the National Book Award

Novelist, critic, and winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards for science fiction

Feminist critic, essayist, and memoirist, whose many books include The End of the Novel of Love and Fierce Attachments

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