Kenyon students who volunteer for KR’s Student Associates program do much of the hard work that keeps the magazine running. On Thursday, April 28, following a reading by poets Terrance Hayes and Yona Harvey to celebrate Kenyon’s Poem in your Pocket Day, KR threw a festive dinner to honor the heroic efforts of the 2011 KR Associates and Interns at the college’s Writer’s House.
KR Editor David Lynn acknowledged the students’ hard work, saying, “The KR Associates are an astonishing, multi-talented group. From reading submissions to teaching in the local elementary school, from running Poem in Your Pocket Day to sharing stories and poems in a retirement home, their energy, enthusiasm, and commitment are at the heart of the KR community.”
Managing Editor Tyler Meier added, “The Kenyon Review has become so much larger than a quarterly magazine. It takes a force to animate all the strings that make the whole thing come to life. This is what the associates do–they animate the old, storied name of The Kenyon Review–and in the present moment they make it mean not only what it does, but what it can.”
KR Director of Programs Anna Duke Reach noted that it would be impossible to run KR’s many summer writing programs without the help of student associates. She expressed particular gratitude for the work of Program Assistant Libby Panhorst: “For the past two years, Libby Panhorst has been a linchpin in KR‘s summer writers workshops. She charges fearlessly into administrative tasks to keep KR‘s writing programs on track. Libby has stayed on campus over the summer to facilitate the daily activities of adult as well as high school students; she serves many roles, from roommate assignments to Scrabble Umpire or caring for bee stings.”
Working with KR’s student associates, we see the future of literary publishing in the energy and enthusiasm that they bring to the daily tasks of producing KR and running its programs. We owe them our thanks.