Application deadline: August 15

Fall editorial internships at Boston Review run from September to December.

Interns gain exposure to the fundamentals of editing, producing, and marketing a web and print magazine for serious readers. Our small team makes for a unique opportunity to collaborate with experienced professionals across all aspects of magazine publishing.

Most interns have entered the program while undergraduate or graduate students or as recent graduates. While prior editorial or publishing experience is valuable, it is less important than exceptional attention to detail and facility with written language, a demonstrated interest in politics and ideas, an eagerness to learn, and a commitment to discussing complex, often controversial subjects in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented, intellectually demanding environment.

Interns are paid $15 per hour. Full-time interns work 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Monday through Friday; part-time interns work three full days a week. All interns work in person at our offices in Cambridge, MA. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, especially those not well-represented in journalism and the publishing industry. Please note that we are unfortunately not able to sponsor visas for interns from outside the United States.

Most time during the internship is spent fact checking and proofreading articles for print and web publication, helping to evaluate submissions, and assisting with newsletter planning and production. Other tasks may involve web production, website and archive maintenance, art research, and other administrative, marketing, or publicity duties.

Interns are extremely valued members of the Boston Review team, and they have gone on to significant positions in the publishing world, including at NBC News, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Jacobin, and Boston Review itself.

About Boston Review

Independent and nonprofit since 1975, Boston Review is an award-winning magazine of ideas, politics, and culture. Animated by hope and committed to equality, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world. To that end, we publish leading writers, scholars, and activists on the most pressing political, intellectual, and cultural debates of our time. We take a special interest in matters of injustice—from war, human rights, and mass incarceration to poverty, inequality, and threats to democracy. And since democracy depends on engaged public discussion, we make everything we publish free to read online, without ads and paywalls.

How to Apply

Please submit the following materials in a single PDF file:

1. A cover letter of no more than one single-spaced page explaining why you are seeking a Boston Review internship. Please give us some sense of the ideas, issues, and debates that are most important to you, as well as your organizational or research background. Be sure to specify whether you are seeking a full- or part-time position (and please note that part-time positions require three full days in the office a week).
2. A résumé or curriculum vitae detailing your educational background, no more than two pages.
3. The names, phone numbers, and email addresses of two references. Please specify their relationships to you. We prefer, but do not require, that at least one reference be a past or current employer.
4. Answers to the following two questions, comprising no more than one single-spaced page:

• In no more than 250 words, say what you liked about an essay—of at least 3,000 words, published in a magazine comparable to Boston Review—that has influenced you.
• In no more than 300 words, describe what you take to be the best possible objection to a view you are deeply committed to, and then defend your position by responding to the objection.

Thank you for your interest in writing for Boston Review! We welcome submissions of essays and book reviews of through this form.

Please note that we are a general interest magazine of ideas, politics, and culture with an international audience; we are not a local Boston news organization. We primarily publish long-form essays, substantial book reviews, political, cultural, and social analysis, and occasional reporting and commentary on current affairs. We do not publish op-eds or essays written in an op-ed style, and we do not accept unsolicited personal essays. Most essays we publish are longer than 3,000 words.

We have a very small editorial staff. We try to review the large number of submissions we receive within a month of the submission date, but delays can occasionally lead to much longer response times. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

1. We consider drafts between 2,000 and 6,000 words subject to these limitations:

• We do not accept unsolicited memoirs or personal essays.
• We do not accept op-eds or pieces written in an op-ed style.

2. If you are submitting a pitch instead of a draft, please describe your vision for the essay in significant detail, on the order of one whole single-spaced page. Please provide enough substance to demonstrate your understanding of the subject matter, showcase your ability to write in an engaging style for a general audience, sketch the argument you intend to make, and convey the stakes of the issue for a broad readership. (Please do not simply list questions you want to explore; we want to know how you intend to answer them.)

3. We usually publish reviews only within six months of the publication or release date of the work under review. It is best to submit reviews as close as possible to the release date of the work under review, ideally in advance. By timing reviews in this way, we hope they have a chance to influence the terms of public debate and reach a very broad audience. But we make exceptions to this rule depending on the strength of a review and the amount and quality of coverage a work has already gotten.

4. If you have published work elsewhere, please include links to examples of your other writing.

5. Submissions perform much better when they show familiarity with work Boston Review has published. Please read a few of our essays before you submit to get a sense of the style and substance we are looking for.