''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 publish ...
.
The editors in chief are Deborah Chasman and political philosopher
Joshua Cohen;
Pulitzer Prize-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 A ...
,
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, 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. In 1976, after the departure of some of the founding editors, the publication was co-edited by Juan Alonso and
Gail Pool
Gail Pool (born July 4, 1946) is an American writer and critic, whose work has focused on books, the culture of magazines, and travel.
Early life and education
Pool was born in New York City, where she attended Little Red School House and Hu ...
, 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
Mark Silk is an American academic. He is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, where he also serves as the Director the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. In addition, Silk is a Contributing ...
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,
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 publish ...
has been publishing a "''Boston Review'' Books" series.
Deborah Chasman joined the magazine as co-editor in 2001.
Pulitzer-prize winner
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 current fiction editor;
Timothy Donnelly
Timothy Donnelly (born June 3, 1969, Providence, Rhode Island) is an American poet.
Life
He earned his BA from Johns Hopkins University and his MFA in Poetry from Columbia University's MFA in Creative Writing program.
He is an associate profe ...
, 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
''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 ...
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
Emily Barton (born 1969) is an American novelist, critic and academic. She is the author of three novels: ''The Testament of Yves Gundron'' (2000), ''Brookland'' (2006) and ''The Book of Esther'' (2016).
Background and education
Barton was raise ...
.
Fiction contests
The publication sponsors well-regarded annual contests in fiction; past winners include
Michael Dorris
Michael Anthony Dorris (January 30, 1945 – April 10, 1997) was an American novelist and scholar who was the first Chair of the Native American Studies program at Dartmouth College. His works include the novel '' A Yellow Raft in Blue Water'' ( ...
, Tom Paine, and
Jacob M. Appel.
"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 Poets & Writers, Inc. is one of the largest nonprofit literary organizations in the United States serving poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The organization publishes a bi-monthly magazine called ''Poets & Writers Magazine'', ...
'' (April 29, 2009). winners read from their work at the
92nd Street Y'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,
Alice James Books
Alice James Books is an American non-profit poetry press located in Farmington, Maine and affiliated with the University of Maine at Farmington.
History and mission
"Alice James Books was founded as a co-operative press in Cambridge, MA in 19 ...
,
Emily Hiestand,
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 am ...
, professor of law
*
Sadik Al-Azm, philosopher
*
John Ashbery, 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
Seyla Benhabib ( born September 9, 1950) is a Turkish-American philosopher. Seyla Benhabib is a senior research scholar and adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Columbia University Depar ...
, 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 nove ...
, novelist and critic
*
Lucie Brock-Broido, poet
*
Stephanie Burt, 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 Par ...
, 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
John Ricardo Irfan "Juan" Cole (born October 23, 1952) is an American academic and commentator on the modern Middle East and South Asia. Dead link; no archive located. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University ...
, historian
*
Paul Collier
Sir Paul Collier, (born 23 April 1949) is a British development economist who serves as the Professor of Economics and Public Policy in the Blavatnik School of Government and the director of the International Growth Centre. He currently is a ...
, economist
*
Colin Dayan, 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
Khaled Abou el Fadl ( ar, خالد أبو الفضل, ) (born October 23, 1963) is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he has taught courses on International Human Rights, Islamic jurisprude ...
, professor of law
*
Owen Fiss
Owen M. Fiss (born 1938) is an American professor who is a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale Law School.
Biography
Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Fiss received his B.A. degree from Dartmouth College in 1959, B.Phil. from Oxford University in 1961, ...
, professor of law
*
Robert Frank, photographer and filmmaker
*
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 ...
, economist
*
Akbar Ganji
Akbar Ganji ( fa, اکبر گنجی , born 31 January 1960 in Tehran) is an Iranian journalist, writer and a former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has been described as "Iran's preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly pop ...
, journalist
*
Michael Gecan
Michael Gecan is a community organizer in New York City affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. He was trained in part by Saul Alinsky. He is lead organizer for East Brooklyn Congregations and other New York-based organizations. He is the ...
, political activist
*
Vivian Gornick, essayist and critic
*
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 ...
, poet
*
Lani Guinier
Carol Lani Guinier (; April 19, 1950 – January 7, 2022) was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured p ...
, 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
Pamela Susan Karlan (born 1959) is an American legal scholar who is the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. She is on a leave of absence from Stanford Law School. A ...
, 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 ...
, economist
*
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 ...
, 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
Tim William Eric Maudlin (born April 23, 1958) is an American philosopher of science who has done influential work on the metaphysical foundations of physics and logic.
Education and career
Maudlin graduated from Sidwell Friends School, W ...
, philosopher
*
Heather McHugh
Heather McHugh (born August 20, 1948) is an American poet notable for the independent ranges of her aesthetic as a poet, and for her working devotion to teaching and translating literature.
Life
Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, educator and ...
, poet
*
Honor Moore, poet
*
Luis Moreno-Ocampo
Luis Moreno OcampoMoreno Ocampo's surnames are often hyphenated in English-language media to mark Moreno as a surname, not a given name. (born 4 June 1952) is an Argentine lawyer who served as the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Co ...
, International Criminal Court chief prosecutor
*
Martha Nussbaum, 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 Gerald Peary (born October 30, 1944) is an American film critic, filmmaker, editor of the University Press of Mississippi, and a former curator of the Harvard Film Archive.
Early life and education
Peary graduated from Rider University in 1964, w ...
, 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
Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most o ...
, 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, philosopher
*
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 ...
, philosopher
*
Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named ...
, 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 Centennial ...
, sociologist
*
Elaine Scarry, literary scholar
*
Don Share
Don Share is an American poet. He is the former chief editor of ''Poetry'' magazine in Chicago. He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee.
Career
Share, who was named the editor-in-chief of ''Poetry'' in 2013, previously served there as Senior Editor. E ...
, poet and literary critic
*
Charles Simic
Dušan Simić ( sr-cyr, Душан Симић, ; born May 9, 1938), known as Charles Simic, is a Serbian American poet and former co-poetry editor of the ''Paris Review''. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for ''The World Doesn' ...
, Poet Laureate of the United States
*
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter (born September 27, 1958) is an American international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, political scientist and public commentator. From 2002 to 2009, she was the Dean of Princeton University's School of Public and Interna ...
, international affairs scholar
*
Susan Sontag, essayist and social critic
*
Eliot Spitzer, 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, professor of law, psychologist, and film critic
*
Mark Strand
Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 – November 29, 2014) was a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990 and received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004 ...
, Poet Laureate of the United States
*
Cass Sunstein, 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, writer
*
Hal Varian
Hal Ronald Varian (born March 18, 1947 in Wooster, Ohio) is Chief Economist at Google and holds the title of emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he was founding dean of the School of Information. Varian is an eco ...
, economist
*
Eliot Weinberger
Eliot Weinberger (born 6 February 1949 in New York City) is a contemporary American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. He is primarily known for his literary writings (essays) and political articles, the former characterized by their wide-ra ...
, essayist and translator
*
Stephen Walt, 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 sc ...
, professor of law
See also
*
List of literary magazines
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