Critical Writing

We consider book reviews and literary essays/criticism, public-facing scholarship, and arts criticism (film, dance, theater, performance, visual art, and beyond) year-round. We welcome reviews of work in translation, books published by smaller presses and university presses, and work that has received less critical attention. If you are including work by another artist or artists (visual art or a substantial literary excerpt, for example) in your review or essay, it is your responsibility to obtain permission and cover any permissions fees. Submit one work at a time, but feel free to let us know in your cover letter if you would be interested in contributing critical writing on a more regular basis.

Please do not submit fiction, poetry, translation, or personal essays and creative nonfiction without a critical or craft connection; we consider those during our yearly open reading period for creative work in September and October.

We publish both web features and a quarterly print journal; while we can consider a preference for web or print, we cannot accommodate all such requests, and we will offer digital or print publication based on our current publishing needs. Regardless of platform, you can expect a payment of $100 for prose. (This may increase in the event of increased funding or special initiatives.)

Our submission fee is waived for subscribers. If you are interested in a subscription, click here. If you subscribe, email thehopkinsreview@gmail.com to request a private, fee-waived “Subscriber Submission” portal to submit your work. Subscribers can submit in any genre at any time of year.

For a sense of what we publish, buy an issue, check out our open-access web features, or take a look at the year's sample print issue on Project MUSE.

Thank you for your interest in The Hopkins Review.