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

Hitting Budapest

A short story, winner of the Caine Prize.

  • NoViolet Bulawayo

All Of Humanity

King Lear on the big screen.

  • Alan A. Stone

The Raw and the Cooked

On spontaneity in poetry.

  • Christopher Schmidt

Catch the Dying Light

Out of mourning and its aftermath, The Bride of E asserts a new and energized approach to elegy.

  • Lindsay Turner

Microreview: Aaron Belz, Lovely, Raspberry

Poems that embrace narrative, brevity, down-to-earth diction, and slapstick.

  • Jason Labbe

Review: Union!

By Ish Klein.

  • Kristina Marie Darling

Sign up for our newsletter

Microreview: Dara Wier, Selected Poems

A lack of philosophical posturing, name-dropping and other navel-gazing tics makes this collection very attractive.

  • Virginia Konchan

Review: The Dance of No Hard Feelings

By Mark Bibbins.

  • Fred Muratori

2010 Poetry Contest Winner: Anthony Caleshu

  • Anthony Caleshu

Visitation

  • Eamon Grennan

Pursuit of Happiness

  • Peter Cooley

One Dispensation

  • Elizabeth Whittlesey

The Four Questions

  • Seth Landman

This Is Serious Business

  • Jason W. Selby

From Which Mortar Cities Rise

  • G.C. Waldrep

The Breakfast in Heidelberg Series

  • Caitlin Doyle

Instantly I Was Love

  • Amanda Nadelberg

How the Other Half Files Its Teeth

  • Dan Pinkerton

The Moor

A short story

  • Ben C. Stroud

There Is a Law Against It Here

  • Jessica Fjeld

Office

  • Allison Titus

Abeyance

  • Jose Perez Beduya

Puff-puff-puff! Parading Grandpas

  • Miłosz Biedrzycki

Reductive

  • Arthur Vogelsang
trending_flat
Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox

A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Donate

Become a Member

Subscribe