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:
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.

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.