Writers’ Guidelines & Submissions
The best way to get a sense of the kind of material Boston Review is looking for is to read the magazine. (Sample copies are available for $5.00.) We do not consider previously published material. Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as we are notified of the fact. We accept submissions through our online submissions system. We strongly encourage online submission, however, if you must use postal mail, our address is Boston Review, 35 Medford St., Suite 302, Somerville, MA 02143. We do not accept faxed or emailed submissions. Payment varies. Response time is generally 2-4 months.
A self-addressed stamped envelope must accompany all snail-mailed
submissions.
NONFICTION AND BOOK-REVIEW ESSAYS:
You may submit query letters and unsolicited nonfiction up to 5,000 words
via the online submissions
system.
FICTION:
Boston Review reads fiction submissions between September 15 and
May 15 each year.
From Junot Díaz, fiction editor: “I’m looking for fiction
that resembles the Thirty-Mile Woman from Toni Morrison’s Beloved:
‘She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she
gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.’ Or as
Takashi Murakami puts it: ‘We want to see the newest things. That is
because we want to see the future, even if only momentarily. It is the moment
in which, even if we don’t completely understand what we have glimpsed,
we are nonetheless touched by it. This is what we have come to call art.’
I’m looking for fiction in which a heart struggles against itself,
in which the messy unmanageable complexity of the world is revealed. Sentences
that are so sharp they cut the eye.”
Please keep submissions under 4,000 words and use the online
submissions system.
Boston Review also runs an annual short story contest. The 2009 contest is closed; our next deadline will be in Fall 2010.
POETRY:
Boston Review reads poetry submissions between September 15 and
May 15 each year. We are devoted to selecting from unsolicited manuscripts
the majority of the poems published in our magazine. We encourage you to
submit your work. Again, please use the online
submissions system.
This is the third year that Boston Review is hosting the Discovery contest as publishing partner of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. The deadline to participate in the Discovery contest is January 15, 2010.
BR also runs an annual poetry contest. The 2009 contest is closed; our next deadline will be in Spring 2010.
BR Footnote:
Boston Review’s intern blog
A Cause for Celebration at Boston Review! (03/10/10)
Putting Out Fires, Starting New Ones (03/3/10)
In Lebanon, history on repeat (02/24/10)
Culture-the missing piece of effective Counterinsurgency Policy (01/26/10)
(01/18/10)
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