Boston Review

Boston Review is probably best known for its current fiction editor, Junot Diaz who received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2008. BR was founded in 1975 and is an independent, nonprofit institution. It aims to expand political debate combining politics and poetry down the page. It has a national readership, and currently seeks writers in both poetry and fiction. Submissions are accepted through the online submissions system, or by mail: Boston Review, 35 Medford St. Suite 302, Somerville, MA 02143. A self-addressed stamped envelope must accompany all snail-mailed submissions. Faxed or emailed submissions will not be accepted. Payment varies. Response time is generally 2-4 months.

POETRY:  
BR reads poetry submissions between September 15 and May 15 each year. Use the online submissions system.

FICTION:
  BR 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.” Keep submissions under 4,000 words and use the online submissions system.

BR also runs an annual short story contest. The 2009 contest is closed; the next deadline will be in Fall 2010.

-- Lisa Reyes