The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review Quarterly magazine of literature and the arts, founded in 1948. Poetry, fiction, essays, and more.

The Hudson Review was founded in 1947 by Princeton University alumni Frederick Morgan '43, Joseph Bennett '43, and William Arrowsmith '45. They were students in the first creative writing course taught at Princeton, by the poet Allen Tate. The students became editors of the college's Nassau Literary Magazine, and Tate advised them to begin their own literary magazine once they completed their serv

ice in World War II. The first issue of The Hudson Review was published in spring 1948, and the magazine has been in continuous quarterly publication ever since. In 1998, Frederick Morgan turned over the editorship to Paula Deitz, who joined the magazine in 1967 and became Coeditor in 1975. The journal's name denotes its origins in a makeshift office in lower Manhattan, across the street from the Hudson River, in the trustees' room of the Sapolio soap factory owned by Morgan's father.

Taras and Holder’s Firebird is untouchable, unsentimental, sharp in every way, without an ounce of the eroticism of Foki...
08/07/2026

Taras and Holder’s Firebird is untouchable, unsentimental, sharp in every way, without an ounce of the eroticism of Fokine’s original concept. In her pas de deux with the prince, she does not cede to his curiosity or to his attempts to enfold her, nor does she deign to look at him. Her entire body shimmers and shakes, proclaiming its freedom. Beautiful and remote, she becomes a potent image of female strength. In the dénouement of the story, she remains still, balancing on pointe, wild and strong, as the stage swirls around her.

—Marina Harss reviews the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Firebird. Read the rest, free to nonsubscribers, at https://hudsonreview.com/2026/07/dancing-in-new-york-revivals-and-renewals/

Image: Dance Theatre of Harlem Company Artist Alexandra Hutchinson in Firebird. Photo by Rachel Papo.

The European blackbirdis a much better singerthan the blackbirds at home, and now I’ve foundthat my own poemssound bette...
08/04/2026

The European blackbird
is a much better singer
than the blackbirds at home,

and now I’ve found
that my own poems
sound better in Italian.

This morning I heard
two of them read aloud,
and they sounded

far more mellifluous
than they do in English,
as though written

by a poet more elegant
and serious than I am,
from another era

and wearing a glossy
black cape like the wings
of the blackbird

whose silvery trills
spilled down from the tops
of the umbrella pines

when I stepped
into the garden,
content just to listen.

—“Blackbirds” by Jeffrey Harrison. Read this and two more of his poems, free to nonsubscribers, at https://hudsonreview.com/2026/07/a-stone-for-mark-blackbirds-miracle-of-the-fish/

One of [Doctor Faustus'] most innovative features, hugely influential on all future drama (and film), was Marlowe’s inve...
08/03/2026

One of [Doctor Faustus'] most innovative features, hugely influential on all future drama (and film), was Marlowe’s invention of the soliloquy. “Today we are so familiar with the dramatic representation of a powerful, complex inner life, largely through the intimacy of the soliloquy, that we somehow assume that it was always an available artistic resource. But in Doctor Faustus it emerged on stage for the first time…It was from Doctor Faustus that the author of Hamlet and Macbeth learned how it could be done.” It amounted, Greenblatt claims, to the “invention of inwardness”—a revolutionary innovation indeed.

…

The great value of Dark Renaissance lies not in biography but in Greenblatt’s judgment, very well backed up, that Marlowe’s role in the opening up of English culture to the wider one of the European Renaissance was major, decisive even, and also to his insistence that the debt owed to Marlowe by Shakespeare, the man who reaped what Marlowe had sown, was inestimable.

—Brooke Allen reviews The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, by Stephen Greenblatt from W. W. Norton & Company. Read the rest, free to nonsubscribers, at https://hudsonreview.com/2026/07/renaissance-men/

Coward’s central theme is neither adultery nor marital regret, but rather the complex web of love, jealousy, devotion an...
07/31/2026

Coward’s central theme is neither adultery nor marital regret, but rather the complex web of love, jealousy, devotion and rivalry inherent in any intensely close friendship. Director Scott Ellis leans into the chemistry between the two women. He also layers in much more physical clowning than is usually found in drawing room comedy, a gamble that pays off.

—Erick Neher reviews Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels, revived by Roundabout Theatre Company. Read the rest at https://hudsonreview.com/2026/07/drawing-room-theater-prospers/

Image: Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara in Fallen Angels on Broadway. Roundabout Theatre Company. Photo by Joan Marcus.

He straightened up when he saw me and exclaimed, “Christ, but he’s risen!” I frowned. “The storm wasn’t so bad out my wa...
07/29/2026

He straightened up when he saw me and exclaimed, “Christ, but he’s risen!”

I frowned. “The storm wasn’t so bad out my way. No danger of me being blown out to sea, surely.”

“I wasn’t talking about that.”

He laid the paper out on the counter, open to the death notices, and pointed one out. I stared at it a minute, trying to make sense. Sure enough, there was a notice with my name on it.

—From “The Nearer Realm” by Rebecca Kilroy, second-prize winner of our 2025 short story contest. Read the rest, free to nonsubscribers, at https://hudsonreview.com/2026/07/second-prize-the-nearer-realm/

Iran, our home, is watered by the sacrificed blood of our martyrs, Sheena reads in Isfahan News on her iPhone’s cracked ...
07/24/2026

Iran, our home, is watered by the sacrificed blood of our martyrs, Sheena reads in Isfahan News on her iPhone’s cracked screen. The Peykan Uber spits her out in front of the historic Motamedi house. Sheena is in the business of sacrifices—chop down what’s old for what’s new, but why bring blood into it? Her parents were supposedly martyrs. What did their blood water? This is why she likes buildings, blood-free, obedient, silent.

—From “The Unmeasurable” by Pegah Ouji, the first-prize winner of our 2025 fiction contest. Read the rest, free to nonsubscribers, at https://hudsonreview.com/2026/07/first-prize-the-unmeasurable/

Our summer issue is now online! Featuring Pegah Ouji and Rebecca Kilroy, the first- and second-prize winners of our 2025...
07/22/2026

Our summer issue is now online! Featuring Pegah Ouji and Rebecca Kilroy, the first- and second-prize winners of our 2025 fiction contest; diary entries by Spanish novelist Antonio Muñoz Molina kept while writing his 2019 novel Your Steps on the Stairs (English translation published in 2025); poems by Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi & Jeffrey Harrison; reviews by Brooke Allen on Shakespeare & Marlowe scholarship, and by Marina Harss on the Dance Theatre of Harlem & the NYC Ballet; and more!

https://hudsonreview.com/issue/summer-2026/

We are happy to announce the winners of our 2025 Short Fiction Contest! Congratulations to Pegah Ouji, who won first pri...
07/22/2026

We are happy to announce the winners of our 2025 Short Fiction Contest! Congratulations to Pegah Ouji, who won first prize with her story "The Unmeasurable." Further congratulations to Rebecca Kilroy, who won second prize with "The Nearer Realm"; Shahriar Shaams, who won third with "The Marabout and the King"; and Yara Zgheib, who received an honorable mention for "The Crystal Shop on Gouraud Street." We are honored to publish their work!

1st and 2nd prize stories are free to read in our Summer 2026 issue. 3rd prize and honorable mention will appear in Autumn 2026. Our next fiction contest will open in 2027.

https://hudsonreview.com/issue/summer-2026/

The works on view explored the resonance of the raw materials of painting, as manipulated by a distinct personality...Ch...
07/15/2026

The works on view explored the resonance of the raw materials of painting, as manipulated by a distinct personality...Changes in the scale of the strokes, like variations in their edges and placement, altered the mood of the paintings, almost as much as the chromatic gamut did, a complexity that triggered analogies with music. While there were familial connections among some works, it was clear that Perehudoff, like his friend Caro, never wanted to repeat himself but kept finding new ways to investigate the possibilities of placing colors together on a surface. The Canadian master is well-known north of the border. He should be better known here.

—Karen Wilkin reviews “William Perehudoff: Boundless Color” at Berry Campbell. Read the rest, free to nonsubscribers, at https://hudsonreview.com/2026/05/at-the-galleries-59/

Image: William Perehudoff (1918-2013), AC-89-053, 1989. Acrylic on canvas, 57 x 43 inches, 144.8 x 109.2 cm. Private Collection. © Estate of William Perehudoff. Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.

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