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 We do not publish op-eds or essays written in an op-ed style, and we do not accept unsolicited personal essays.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.

Application deadline: February 15

Boston Review’s summer editorial fellowship program is designed to prepare the next generation of editors by offering intensive training in editing and producing long-form, ideas-driven magazine writing for a general audience.

Each summer program offers hands-on training for one editorial fellow, touching on all aspects of editorial work: fact checking, proofreading, production, and engagement as well as acquisitions, pitch and draft evaluation, and developmental, line, and copy editing. The program also offers opportunities to network with industry professionals. Fellows work full time, five days a week, in person at our offices in Cambridge, MA.

The fellowship runs from June 1 to around August 31, with some flexibility around exact start and end dates. Fellows are paid $20 per hour. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, especially those not well-represented in journalism and the publishing industry.

Details

Fellows work closely with Boston Review’s small team to gain hands-on experience with the nuts and bolts of editorial work. 

Beyond workshops and trainings with Boston Review staff, most fellowship time is spent proofreading and fact checking essays for print and web publication, assisting with web production, helping to evaluate pitches and drafts, and taking part in all-staff meetings. Fellows may also gain experience with newsletter production, art research, events planning, and website and calendar maintenance.

Eligibility

The program is designed for those ready to step into an editorial career, so a bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant experience is required. (Currently enrolled students, except those who will graduate before the program begins, should not apply.) Regrettably, we are not able to sponsor visas for applicants from outside the United States.

Prior editorial experience is less important than a strong interest in an editorial career and a commitment to learning the editorial craft that goes on behind the scenes. We seek fellows who are curious about ideas and open to feedback, excited about engaging and evaluating alternative views, and comfortable discussing complex, often controversial issues in a fast-paced, detail-oriented environment. 

Perhaps most important, applicants should be familiar with magazine writing of the sort that Boston Review publishes: primarily ideas-driven feature essays, long-form nonfiction book reviews, and political and social analysis (as opposed to op-eds, personal essays, and reportage). Please note that the program does not provide training or mentorship in fellows’ own writing projects.

About Us

Boston Review is a web and print magazine of ideas, politics, and culture. Independent and nonprofit, animated by hope and committed to equality, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world.

We are a small team with a big impact, reaching millions of readers each year. We take a special interest in matters of injustice—from war, human rights, and mass incarceration to poverty, inequality, and threats to democracy. Our fifty-year archive includes work by Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Arundhati Roy, Martha Nussbaum, John Rawls, bell hooks, Cornel West, Vivian Gornick, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Sadiq Al-Azm, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, in addition to many Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award finalists, and MacArthur Fellows.

We take pride in introducing new voices to the public sphere and maintaining the tradition of rigorous editing long associated with the world of little magazines. As historian Robin D. G. Kelley has said, “Writing for Boston Review is a joy because I know that I will always be edited with rigor and care—a miracle in an age when editing has all but disappeared.”

Interns and fellows are extremely valued members of the Boston Review team. Many have gone on to important positions in the publishing world, including at the New York Times, the New Yorker, NBC News, n+1, Jacobin, The Drift, Philadelphia Inquirer, Hammer and Hope, and Boston Review itself.

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. This is by far the most important element of your application. Please give us some sense of the ideas and issues that are most important to you, your academic or research background, and how the fellowship would help to advance your career goals.
2. A résumé or curriculum vitae detailing your educational and professional 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 that at least one reference be a past or current employer.
4. Responses to the following two questions:

• 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.
• 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.

If you have any questions, please contact us at fellowships@bostonreview.net.