Short story

Arts in Society

What Used to Be Caracas

Years after an extinction event nearly wiped out humanity, a team of scientists search Venezuela for signs of life and evidence of what caused the tragedy. Short Story

Mike McClelland

Arts in Society

People Who Report More Stress

Beating cancer should be the biggest challenge in his life, not trying to catch a cab in Manhattan.

Alejandro Varela

Arts in Society

Memoirs of an Imaginary Country

In a lost tale of Casanova, the citizens of a country at the center of the Earth must give up their home—and their women—to colonizers. 

Maria Dahvana Headley

Arts in Society

Adora

An aging AI researcher, alone with her robot companion, must make a difficult decision when the android begins to malfunction.

Sumudu Samarawickrama

Arts in Society

Communism Doesn’t Work

Stuck in an apartment with his ex-boyfriend, a man meets with the government agent who will decide whether the couple has really broken up.

Jack Gain

Arts in Society

Cannibal Acts

In the aftermath of a flu pandemic that kills most of the population, a survivor, barricaded in Alaska, remembers her life while contemplating a grisly choice.

Maureen F. McHugh

Arts in Society

Arts in the Time of Quarantine

A Special Project from Boston Review’s Arts in Society Program

Arts in Society

Say Something

“He’s just a kid. Why are you putting a kid in handcuffs? This feels like profiling. Isn’t that what this is called?”

Tananarive Due

Arts in Society

Mother, Grow My Baby

Winner of the Fall 2019 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest. 

Sabrina Helen Li

Arts in Society

To the Fordham

In a pre-Giuliani New York where pornographic theaters create communities of dissimilar people, a young blue-collar worker and a homeless ex-con forge a connection through their shared enjoyment of public sex.

Samuel R. Delany

Arts in Society

An Arrangement

“He says that he needs to talk to you about something. You feel your stomach churn. He says that he is sorry.” Their relationship in flux, two men go on vacation in Palm Springs to try to patch things up.

Joseph Cassara

Arts in Society

Surely, Not

“What’s worse than any pain is being without him, and what’s worse even still is that it’s his idea to go.”

Amina Gautier