''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form is a "forum", featuring a lead essay and several responses. ''Boston Review'' also publishes an imprint of books with

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...

. The editors in chief are Deborah Chasman and political philosopher Joshua Cohen;

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

-winning writer

Junot Díaz Junot Díaz (; born December 31, 1968) is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was fiction editor at '' Boston Review''. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freed ...

is the fiction editor. The magazine is published by Boston Critic, Inc., a nonprofit organization. It has received praise from notable intellectuals and writers including

John Kenneth Galbraith John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through t ...

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Amer ...

John Rawls John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in ...

Naomi Klein Naomi A. Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses, support of ecofeminism, organized labour, left-wing politics and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism, ecofascism ...

Robin Kelley Robin Davis Gibran Kelley (born March 14, 1962) is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Sout ...

Martha Nussbaum Martha Craven Nussbaum (; born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosop ...

, and

Jorie Graham Jorie Graham (; born May 9, 1950) is an American poet. The Poetry Foundation called Graham "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at ...

History

''Boston Review'' was founded as ''New Boston Review'' in 1975. A quarterly devoted to literature and the arts, the magazine was started by a group that included Juan Alonso, Richard Burgin, and

Anita Silvey Anita Silvey is an author, editor, and literary critic in the genre of children’s literature. Born in 1947 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Silvey has served as Editor-in-Chief of ''The Horn Book Magazine'' and as vice-president at Houghton Mifflin ...

. In 1976, after the departure of some of the founding editors, the publication was co-edited by Juan Alonso and Gail Pool, and then by Gail Pool and Lorna Condon. In the late seventies, it switched from quarterly to bimonthly publication. In 1980, Arthur Rosenthal became publisher of the magazine, which was renamed ''Boston Review'' and edited by Nick Bromell. Succeeding editors were Mark Silk and then Margaret Ann Roth, who remained until 1991. During the eighties, the focus of the magazine broadened and during the nineties became more politically oriented, while maintaining a strong profile in both fiction and poetry. Joshua Cohen replaced Roth in 1991, and has been editor since then. The full text of ''Boston Review'' has been available online since 1995. Since 1996, thirty books have been published based on articles and forums that originally appeared in the ''Boston Review''. Since 2006,

has been publishing a "''Boston Review'' Books" series. Deborah Chasman joined the magazine as co-editor in 2001. Pulitzer-prize winner

is the current fiction editor; Timothy Donnelly, B. K. Fischer, and Stefania Heim are the poetry editors. In 2010, ''Boston Review'' switched from black and white tabloid to an glossy, all-color format. The same year, it was the recipient of ''

Utne Reader ''Utne Reader'' (also known as ''Utne'') ( ) is a digital digest that collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment, generally from alternative media sources including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music, and ...

'' magazine's Utne Independent Press Award for Best Writing. The magazine switched print formats again in 2017, merging its bimonthly general interest magazine and book publications into quarterly, themed bookazines.

Features

New Democracy Forum

The New Democracy Forum is a special feature of the ''Boston Review''. It offers an arena for fostering and exploring issues regarding politics and policy. A typical forum includes a lead article by an expert and contributions from other respondents. Past forums have covered topics such as making foreign aid work, a strategy to disengage from Iraq, and new economic stress in the middle class.

New Fiction Forum

The New Fiction Forum was created as "a space for wide-ranging dialogue about contemporary fiction, a dialogue founded on a simple premise: that despite the intense commercialism of current publishing, there are original, vital novels published every season and readers to whom such narratives are of the profoundest importance". Past forums include fiction and reviews by

Jhumpa Lahiri Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" LahiriMinzesheimer, Bob ''USA Today'', August 19, 2003. Retrieved on 2008-04-13. (born July 11, 1967) is an American author known for her short stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently, in Italia ...

and Emily Barton.

Fiction contests

The publication sponsors well-regarded annual contests in fiction; past winners include Michael Dorris, Tom Paine, and

Jacob M. Appel Jacob M. Appel (born February 21, 1973) is an American author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic.Nagamatsu, Sequoia "A Few Words with the Ubiquitous Jacob M. Appel" ''Prince Mincer'' Journal http://primemincer.com/ confirmed ...

"Discovery" prize

The annual "Discovery"/''Boston Review'' prize is given for a group of poems by a poet who has not yet published a book. Typically, the prize is awarded to four winners and four runners-up;"Four Poets Officially Discovered in 'Discovery'/Boston Review Contest,"
'' Poets & Writers'' (April 29, 2009). winners read from their work at the

92nd Street Y 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a cultural and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, at the corner of East 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Founded in 1874 as the Young Men's Hebrew Association, the ...

's Unterberg Poetry Center. Begun in the 1960s as ''The Nation''/"Discovery" prize, the ''Boston Review'' took over administration of the prize in 2007 when ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...

'' ended its partnership. Previous winners of the "Discovery" prize include

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

, Alice James Books,

Emily Hiestand Emily Hiestand (born 1947 Chicago) is an American writer and poet. Life She grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art. In 1970, she moved to Boston, where she worked as a graphic designer. She studied at ...

, John Poch, and Martin Walls.

Notable contributors

Bruce Ackerman Bruce Arnold Ackerman (born August 19, 1943) is an American constitutional law scholar. He is a Sterling Professor at Yale Law School. In 2010, he was named by '' Foreign Policy'' magazine to its list of top global thinkers. Ackerman was also a ...

, professor of law * Sadik Al-Azm, philosopher *

, poet * Mary Jo Bang, poet * Dan Beachy-Quick, poet *

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only w ...

, novelist * Seyla Benhabib, philosopher and political scientist *

John Berger John Peter Berger (; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to the ...

, artist, writer, and critic *

Jagdish Bhagwati Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26, 1934) is an Indian-born naturalized American economist and one of the most influential trade theorists of his generation. He is a University Professor of economics and law at Columbia University and a Sen ...

, economist * Joseph Biden, US President *

Hans Blix Hans Martin Blix (; born 28 June 1928) is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978–1979) and later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As suc ...

, diplomat, UN weapons inspector *

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...

, literary scholar *

Roberto Bolaño Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (; 28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel ''Los detectives salvajes'' (''The Savage Detectives'' ...

, Chilean novelist and poet *

Roger Boylan Roger Boylan is an American writer (b. 1951) who was raised in Ireland, France, and Switzerland. His Irish novel ''Killoyle, ''called "a virtuoso performance" by ''Publishers Weekly'', is published by Dalkey Archive Press. His second Irish novel ...

, novelist and critic *

Lucie Brock-Broido Lucie Brock-Broido (May 22, 1956 – March 6, 2018) was an American author of four collections of poetry. Biography She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she was Director of Poetry in the Wri ...

, poet *

Stephanie Burt Stephanie Burt (born 1971) is a literary critic and poet who is Professor of English at Harvard University. '' The New York Times'' has called her "one of the most influential poetry critics of ergeneration". Burt grew up around Washington, D.C. ...

, literary scholar *

Rafael Campo Rafael Juan Campo y Pomar (24 October 1813 – 1 March 1890) was President of El Salvador 12 February 1856 – 1 February 1858.

, poet, doctor and writer *

Aimé Césaire Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; ; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word in French. He founded the P ...

, poet and politician * Philip N. Cohen, sociologist *

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

, linguist and political activist * Juan Cole, historian * Paul Collier, economist *

Colin Dayan Colin Dayan, also known as Joan Dayan, is the Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches American studies, comparative literature, and the religious and legal history of the Americas. She has writ ...

, professor of American studies *

Rita Dove Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the positi ...

, Poet Laureate of the United States * Khaled Abou El Fadl, professor of law * Owen Fiss, professor of law *

Robert Frank Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled ''The Americans'', earned Frank comparisons to a modern-da ...

, photographer and filmmaker *

, economist * Akbar Ganji, journalist * Michael Gecan, political activist *

Vivian Gornick Vivian Gornick (born June 14, 1935) is an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist. Early Life and Education In 1957 Gornick received a bachelor of arts degree from City College of New York and in 1960 a master of ...

, essayist and critic *

, poet * Lani Guinier, professor of law *

Donald Hall Donald Andrew Hall Jr. (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) was an American poet, writer, editor and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and includin ...

, Poet Laureate of the United States * Pamela S. Karlan, professor of law *

Elias Khoury Elias Khoury ( ar, إلياس خوري; born 12 July 1948) is a Lebanon, Lebanese novelist, and prominent public intellectual. Accordingly, he has published myriad novels related to literary criticism, which have been translated into several fore ...

, Lebanese novelist and journalist *

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...

, economist *

, novelist *

Glenn Loury Glenn Cartman Loury (born September 3, 1948) is an American economist, academic, and author. He is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005. At the age of ...

, economist * Tim Maudlin, philosopher * Heather McHugh, poet *

Honor Moore Honor Moore is an American writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and plays. Biography She is the daughter of Jenny Moore and of Bishop Paul Moore. She is the author of three collections of poems: ''Red Shoes'', ''Darling'', and ''Memoir''; two ...

, poet * Luis Moreno-Ocampo, International Criminal Court chief prosecutor *

, philosopher * Susan Okin, feminist political philosopher *

George Packer George Packer (born August 13, 1960) is a US journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings for ''The New Yorker'' and ''The Atlantic'' about U.S. foreign policy and for his book '' The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq'' ...

, journalist *

Grace Paley Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist. Paley wrote three critically acclaimed collections of short stories, which were compiled in the Pulitzer Prize and Na ...

, writer and activist * Gerald Peary, film critic *

Marjorie Perloff Marjorie Perloff (born September 28, 1931) is an Austrian-born poetry scholar and critic in the United States. Early life Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany exa ...

, literary scholar *

Rick Perlstein Eric S. Perlstein (born September 3, 1969) is an American historian and journalist who has garnered recognition for his chronicles of the post-1960s American conservative movement. The author of five bestselling books, Perlstein received the 200 ...

, historian and political commentator * Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States *

Eric Posner Eric Andrew Posner (; born December 5, 1965) is an American lawyer and legal scholar who has served as a counsel for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division since 2022. As a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Posner has ...

, professor of law *

Hilary Putnam Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...

, philosopher *

, philosopher * Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate of the United States *

John Roemer John E. Roemer (; born February 1, 1945 in Washington, D.C., to Ruth Roemer and Milton Roemer, namesake of Roemer's law) is an American economist and political scientist. He is the Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Scien ...

, economist *

Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the ...

, feminist poet *

Richard Rorty Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ...

, philosopher * Nir Rosen, journalist *

Saskia Sassen Saskia Sassen (born January 5, 1947) is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York City, and Centen ...

, sociologist * Elaine Scarry, literary scholar * Don Share, poet and literary critic * Charles Simic, Poet Laureate of the United States * Anne-Marie Slaughter, international affairs scholar *

Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay " Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. He ...

, essayist and social critic *

Eliot Spitzer Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 54th governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008. Spitzer was born in New York City, attended P ...

, former Governor of New York *

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

, software developer * Marshall Steinbaum, economist *

Nicholas Stern Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, (born 22 April 1946 in Hammersmith) is a British economist, banker, and academic. He is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Cli ...

, economist *

Alan A. Stone Alan Abraham Stone (August 15, 1929 – January 23, 2022) was an American psychiatrist who was the Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry (Emeritus) at the Harvard Law School. His writing and teaching has focused on professional medical ...

, professor of law, psychologist, and film critic * Mark Strand, Poet Laureate of the United States *

Cass Sunstein Cass Robert Sunstein (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar known for his studies of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, law and behavioral economics. He is also ''The New York Times'' best-selling author ...

, professor of law, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs * Charles Taylor, philosopher *

Charles Tilly Charles Tilly (May 27, 1929 – April 29, 2008) was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history, sociology, and social science at the Uni ...

, sociologist *

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...

, writer * Hal Varian, economist * Eliot Weinberger, essayist and translator *

Stephen Walt Stephen Martin Walt (born July 2, 1955) is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International relations at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University and a political scientist. A member of the realist school of international relatio ...

, international affairs scholar * C. D. Wright, poet *

Howard Zinn Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a politica ...

, historian and social critic *

Jonathan Zittrain Jonathan L. Zittrain (born December 24, 1969) is an American professor of Internet law and the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. He is also a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer scie ...

, professor of law

References

External links

* {{Official website
''Boston Review'' Books series
Bimonthly magazines published in the United States Literary magazines published in the United States Political magazines published in the United States Quarterly magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1975 Magazines published in Boston

History

Features

New Democracy Forum

New Fiction Forum

Fiction contests

"Discovery" prize

Notable contributors

See also

References

External links