We asked a number of writers, editors, colleagues, and Kenyon Review trustees to reflect on David Lynn’s accomplishments and personal qualities, and offer some memories, as Lynn prepares to retire. Here are their responses, edited for clarity.
David Banks, Paul Healy, and Tory Douglass Kingdon
Former and current KR Trustees
When thinking about David’s retirement, our minds were drawn back to 1994 when the three of us met in Weaver Cottage to consider the College’s wish to close-down the Review. You couldn’t blame the administration. Their top priority was the College, which needed every penny they could find and objected to the distraction of the Review. We, on the other hand, wanted to protect Kenyon’s crown jewel and became a group of dissidents.
The winter of 1994 was particularly cold. The heating had gone wrong in Weaver, as it sometimes does. No heat on the ground floor, boiling at the top. So, we conducted our business on the stairs, halfway up. The perfect imagery for our adventure!
The task force employed hard work, a compelling report, guerrilla political skills that built lopsidedly large support from the faculty, administration, students, alumni, and the literary community. The [Kenyon] board saw sense and voted overwhelmingly to accept our recommendation. We won the right to keep the Kenyon Review separate, with a separate board but perfectly congruent with the English Department and the administration.
Very demanding medium-term goals were agreed, and David Lynn was appointed editor. He took off at warp speed, surpassing all our goals within two years. He made the dissidents look like wizards. All the trustees who wanted to shut down the Review have since agreed they were totally gratified by the continuation of the great institution. One of the “Shut Down the Review” leaders even takes full credit for saving the Review!
There have been so many heroes along the way, including the first KR board of Matt Winkler, Jackie Dryfoos, Don Zacharia, Alva Greenberg, and Jean Graham that joined us, and the phenomenal talent that came later that was better and better.
To say that David has been amazing is a gross understatement. His success has been incredibly gratifying. The longest serving editor, he has so many extraordinary accomplishments—his excellence has been a treasure to behold. He started the Young Writers program, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, the KR Fellows program, etc., etc. He has stimulated so many young writers and glorified so many accomplished writers. The list of contributors to the Review is astonishing, a Who’s Who of the literary world. Many great writers have stood up and said how gratified they were that the Review came back and assumed its rightful position as a “beacon” to the literary world; people like Margaret Atwood, George Plimpton, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, and Ian McEwan, to name but a few, sing our praises.
Let us paraphrase Anna Duke Reach: “the vision has gone farther than its original remit, beyond being a literary quarterly, birthing the most impressive literary program.” So much has David accomplished and so indebted are we for what he’s done. We wish he remained editor for many more years. And we salute him in his retirement. Hurray! Hurray!
• •
Matthew Winkler
KR Trustee, Kenyon College Trustee, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus and Co-founder, Bloomberg News
If John Crowe Ransom made the Kenyon Review the quarterly embraced by the most diverse literary community on both sides of the Atlantic during its first two decades, David Lynn saved it from insolvency, restored its relevance to young and not-so-young writers alike and, most important, enabled KR to nurture and sustain literary excellence at Kenyon forever. That’s no idle boast, as this distinction runs through so many recent notable alums, including Jena Blum, John Green, Laura Hillenbrand, and Ransom Riggs.
That David Lynn managed this achievement under four Kenyon presidents, each of whom increasingly championed KR as a lodestar for Kenyon College, is as improbable as it is most certainly unique. That’s because President Lund was exhausted by the financial stress of KR when he was succeeded by President Caples, who immediately led the Board of Trustees to suspend its publication in 1970, two years before David Lynn matriculated at Kenyon. KR revived publication in 1978 under President Jordan, who had decided to kill it once and for all in 1993 because of annual deficits.
That’s what David Lynn inherited when he was appointed acting editor after a handful of Kenyon trustees persuaded their colleagues to give KR a final lease on life if the deficits went away. I entered the picture at this point as one of the original members of the KR board conceived to rescue it and sustain it. I am the only active trustee from that original board in 1995. My experience with KR is a testament to David Lynn’s ability to persuade the most diverse community of Kenyon and non-Kenyon people to commit themselves unreservedly to KR.
David and I met in Chalmers Library in 1973 and we have been best friends since then, which of course is another reason why Kenyon and KR is so special. I came to Kenyon mostly because my mother was an English teacher at the Dalton School and she studied with Lionel Trilling (he was Ransom’s friend and an admirer of KR and one of the most respected literary figures of the mid-twentieth century) at Columbia University. My mother extolled Kenyon because of KR (even though it was gone when I showed up).
When David Lynn called me in the earliest days of Bloomberg News (1993-1994) when I had no time for anything else and said, “Matt, I need your help,” I lost my resolve to say, “No, I can’t right now.” I know the conversation we had was replicated many times with many other sponsors and benefactors of KR, which is a tribute to David Lynn’s persistence. As Reggie Jackson said, he was “the straw that stirs the drink.”
There were all kinds of reasons why KR should have failed: academic politics, relentless financial pressures, insufficient resources, Kenyon alumni indifference. David Lynn overcame all of these challenges and conceived initiatives that transformed KR and Kenyon for the better. The Young Writers and adult Writers programs in the summer were his creations, and they instantly made KR relevant to new and current generations in the literary world, raised additional funds because they were profitable, became vehicles for recruiting a much more diverse group of high school students to Kenyon (after their time in the KR summer programs) and provided scholarships for high school students who had no awareness of Kenyon. Throughout, David’s KR was winning O. Henry and Pushcart prizes almost every year and at some points more than any other literary journal.
When we conceived the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in 2002, David embraced KRALA as way to increase KR’s endowment and prestige. Now in its eighteenth year, KRALA brings Kenyon closer to the world’s greatest authors, e.g., Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Simon Schama, Joyce Carol Oates, Seamus Heaney. KRALA is unique because there is no other liberal arts college that celebrates the greatest literary figures each year in the literary capital of the world and raises money for Kenyon while enhancing its visibility and stature. None of it would have happened without David Lynn.
If you told Presidents Lund and Caples—not to mention John Crowe Ransom—that the Kenyon Review editor is endowed in perpetuity, that KR has an endowment of almost $10 million, and that it is annually the biggest single contributor to adding worthy applicants welcomed by the Kenyon College admissions office, they would dismiss this reality as a wild fantasy. It happened because of David Lynn.
• •
Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky
KR Associate Editor, Professor of English
Kenyon and the American community of letters owe David a debt of gratitude not simply for saving the Kenyon Review when it was on the verge of closing, but also for his visionary leadership in making KR a model for literary publishing in the twenty-first century. He has been a tireless and successful advocate for literary magazines, raising a substantial endowment to give KR both a secure future and the resources to innovate. Under David’s leadership, KR has become much more than a literary magazine: he has nurtured new and diverse voices in short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, both as an editor and through the creation of the KR Fellows, which identifies and supports some of the most exciting young writers in the country. He has also led the development of online literary journals, created innovative programs to teach writing to emerging writers of all ages, and launched prestigious awards for literary achievement and literary science writing. At Kenyon, he has served as a mentor for an entire generation of students interested in writing and publishing through his work as a teacher and his role in creating the Kenyon Review Associates Program, which has given many students insight into literary editing and opened the way for careers in publishing.
As an editor, David has always made it his highest priority to identify exciting new voices, working closely with authors to turn promising work into prize-winning publications. When he talks with students about the qualities that make a successful story or poem, he emphasizes three qualities: surprise, delight, and mastery. Even after twenty-six years as the editor of the Kenyon Review, David has never allowed his tastes to grow predictable: as a reader, he still searches for those experiences of surprise and delight that result from discovering new writers who have mastered their craft. He remains as open to experiment and innovation in form as he was when he first joined the staff of KR. He tells KR’s editors that they shouldn’t hesitate to argue with him about pieces about which they feel passionately: “I may not get it, but I’m always willing to be convinced.” He has always put great writing—and the talented writers who produce it—first. His leadership style is to set ambitious goals then allow his staff to exercise their creativity: I saw this personally many times when we would brainstorm some ambitious new program or initiative—Kenyon Review Online, the KR Fellows, the Writing and Thinking Program, a special issue of the magazine on literary science writing—and then David would give both me and the magazine’s staff the freedom to develop that idea from that initial sketch.
Most importantly, though, what David has always emphasized at KR is the idea of creating and sustaining a thriving literary community. From the high school students who attend Young Writers at Kenyon to the Kenyon students who apply to become KR Associates, from the adult writers who come to summer workshops to the KR Fellows who spend two years in Gambier writing and teaching, from the writers who submit to KR to the readers who await each issue with anticipation, KR has become an extended literary family that shares the same goal of producing great writing and sharing it with the world.
Having secured KR’s future and made it one of the country’s premier literary magazines, David has laid out a vision of broadening access to KR and its programs, especially among traditionally underrepresented writers and students. KR’s summer writing programs are widely acknowledged as among the best in the country, and his ambition is to take the Young Writers at Kenyon model and make it available to students across the country who may not have the resources to spend two weeks at Kenyon in the summer. He hopes to continue to advise the new editorial team at KR, and to work with the new editor to make KR’s future even stronger.
Personally, I would say that working with David has been inspiring. He has created a great team at KR and led them with both vision and humanity. His door is always open, and he encourages his staff to imagine new ways to do their jobs. He inspires us with his love of great writing and his enthusiasm for the vocation of sharing that great writing with readers by producing exciting, challenging and diverse issues of the magazine and KROnline.
As a professor, David has been generous, dedicated, and charismatic. He urges his students to be unashamed of their love for writing, but also to set their ambitions high. He is passionate about the power of narrative to shape our lives, and he doesn’t compromise when it comes to the need to tell a story with clarity and power. Many of his students have gone on to careers as writers, editors, journalists, and teachers, inspired by his vision of how a well-told story can change the world. As a colleague, he is thoughtful, generous, sometimes fierce in his advocacy of what he believes to be right: he has never shied away from a fight when values like great writing and teaching are on the line, and he has also been unfailingly supportive of colleagues when he perceives an injustice. I have counted on him as both a reader and a friend throughout my career, and I will miss his insight, his passion, and his infectious joy in the work we do as writers and teachers.
• •
Anna Duke Reach
Director of Programs
As a leader, David Lynn thinks BIG. In conversation, the Kenyon Review is always “the number one literary journal in America,” with the “best staff anywhere.” The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement (KRALA) gala is the finest dinner in New York City. And David likes to be the godfather to all KR writers, staff, and KR Associates. Whenever a KR Associate or a summer writer returns to Kenyon, he always greets them (in his booming radio voice) with the words, “Welcome home!” He relishes in his “KR family.”
Thinking big is the reason we are in Finn House. When David learned Walton House was to be knocked down for the new studio art building (Horvitz Hall), he called then Kenyon President Georgia Nugent to ask to move to the dean’s house (Neff Cottage). When she finished laughing, she realized our staff numbers worked well for that house. Shrock came in, examined the house, and found it was a giant sponge, since the roof was leaking and the plaster walls were holding the water. Instead of the twelve-week plan to convert some bedrooms to offices, it became a seven-month month restoration project. The Cheever Room was added a year later. When funding for all this was needed, David was bold enough to ask Jim Finn for help. Jim agreed, and now it is the charming Carpenter Gothic home of Kenyon Review. So, David has taught me the value of dreaming big—without such high goals, KR would not be thriving as it is today.
David is great at delegating and trusting staff to get a job done. He is more big-picture than micro-manager and details rather bore him. He makes decisions quickly, assigns the work to staff, then checks off his list. He does pen beautiful, warm emails to KR trustees and always takes time to be in touch with them. Then he asks big, and usually gets what he asks for. In his own words, “I can be bought but I’m not cheap.”
He enjoys people and a good dinner party, and he is a great (and frequent) host. He and Wendy are so gracious about opening their home to students and faculty, visiting writers, and newcomers. David enjoys a good time, works hard, and knows when to celebrate. I hope he will continue to host gatherings in the village, as these bring all English faculty together with KR staff so that we all work better together. He makes hosting look easy! At KRALA, he always greets guests in the doorway, and during summer programs he always makes time to welcome all to “the world’s best environment for writing.”
A key decision he made with programs was to integrate them into the journal. So many prompts for our generative classes come from the pages of KR, and monies earned from summer workshops help pay Kenyon’s business services (it is a benefit to keep dorms open in summer) and some funds are earned to help KR operations and pay for publication of the journal. During his tenure, KR moved from a tri-quarterly (don’t you love that word?) journal to six issues a year, Young Writers grew from twelve students to over 200 each summer, the Writers Workshop moved from 40 to 180 participants, and KROnline was born. There is a symbiotic relationship between KR and its writing programs that isn’t true for many other journals, but it has been the reason we continue to thrive. David also deserves laurels for his technological vision: he was early to push for an online journal, online submissions (KR joined with Submittable in its early days), Facebook pages, and social media. Innovation combined with maintaining literary excellence are balanced, and both are critical to KR success.
David has nurtured the KR board and many board members have become his friends for life. This relationship will go on past his retirement, as the bonds are deep. His blood runs purple, too. He is a big supporter of Kenyon College and partners Kenyon Review programs (like KR Fellows, and the pre-orientation Writing and Thinking program) to mutual benefit.
David has been an integral part of campus life for twenty-six years, and we are all the better for him.
• •
Tory Weber
Associate Director of Programs and Fellowships
During my junior year at Kenyon, I was a student in David’s Advanced Fiction Workshop, and I remember the first time I went to see him during office hours to discuss a story I was writing. I had been a Kenyon Review Associate for over a year at that point, so had interacted with David at KR Associate seminars and other KR events, but knowing that his editorial eye was now turned to my own work was nerve-wracking. After pointing out some of the definite flaws in my writing, David set the story aside and said, “Listen, there are some problems with this story and you know that. But I can see that you know how to write a story. So trust your gut, have confidence in your instincts, and know that you can fix all the small stuff after you get the story down on paper.” That confidence and validation meant so much to me as a student. Years later, I returned to KR as a full-time staff member and was nervous about returning to work after taking a few years off to care for my young daughter. Again, David’s unwavering confidence was the reassurance I needed to thrive in my new role at the Kenyon Review.
This is one of David’s best qualities—his confidence in other’s abilities, his faith in other’s ideas. If David trusts you, he trusts you completely and is eager to support you in whatever way he can to help you achieve your goals. So much of David’s legacy at KR proves that what he finds most rewarding is seeing people discover their talents and achieve their greatest potential. This is what has driven him to build the Kenyon Review from a literary journal to a robust literary arts organization that touches the lives of thousands of people each year beyond those who just subscribe to the magazine. The most successful programs we run today are a direct result of David’s desire to give people the opportunity to grow and succeed in their creative pursuits. He started the Young Writers program to give hundreds of teens the opportunity find their voices in a community of like-minded peers each summer. He started the Writers Workshop to encourage adult writers to rediscover and further develop those creative voices. He started the Kenyon Review Associates program to offer Kenyon students a window into the world of publishing and giving them invaluable experience to jump-start their literary careers after college. He started the Kenyon Review Fellowships to provide emerging new writers with the time and space to cultivate their talents as writers, teachers, and editors. And he expanded the magazine to include an online journal to allow more space for both established and new writers to showcase their very best work.
As a boss, David strikes the perfect balance between knowing when to lead and knowing when to let others steer. He entertains every idea with an open mind, and isn’t afraid to be proven wrong. Instead of issuing directives to his staff, David asks questions, and he listens deeply and thoughtfully to our responses. I know that if I make a strong case for pursuing a particular project or idea, he’ll give me his fullest support.
• •
Kirsten Reach
Fiction Editor
Any student who took Advanced Fiction at Kenyon will say “surprise and delight” in a lower register, imitating David’s voice. He has distilled the ethos of his editorial sensibilities to this simple phrase, which we’ve since printed on T-shirts for summer workshops, and some senior interns even shook up as themed cocktails. David is a warm, good-humored presence in the office and someone who keeps meetings blessedly short. He goes out of his way to reach out to former students and editors in moments they need encouragement, be it an especially thoughtful rejection letter, a note of congratulations after a book announcement, or a kind note in a time of crisis. He’s also refreshingly humble, and I’m pleased to report that we embarrassed him deeply with a room full of Oh Henry! bars and an honorary reading after he won the O. Henry Award for “Divergence,” which appeared in the late, great Glimmer Train and later in his story collection.
David has been a remarkable mentor to me when we have a story to talk through: whether it’s worth the deep editing required before publication because it’s important to publish, or whether it’s something we ought to let go. In his hands we’ve wrought a leaner, sharper magazine. He’s also eager to embrace new technologies, in hopes that these tools will serve our readers in the years to come. He’s allowed us space to grow the magazine on many platforms. His emails always begin with the weather in Gambier and what the students are up to—he’s mindful of including our editors, even those far away, in the ongoing changes around Finn House.
• •
David Baker
Poetry Editor
I’ve been with KR longer than anybody else, I think. Since 1983, when I started teaching at Kenyon. I moved down to Denison in 1984 but stayed with the magazine, as a fiction reader, then poetry reader. I was associate editor or consulting editor or consulting poetry editor with Gal Crump, Terry Hummer, Marilyn Hacker, and for David’s first year in 1988 or 1989 when he was a one-year temporary editor while they did a search. Twentty-five years ago, he invited me to serve as his poetry editor.
I watched KR turn from a superb magazine into a more superb literary enterprise, with so many programs. The editor’s job is now too much for one person; I don’t know how they will replace him. KR is two magazines now with separate content, many summer programs, many pedagogical programs, reading and literacy programs, all kinds of fellowship and associate programs. One of David’s many visionary skills has been seeing these possibilities and making them happen. It is literary work mixed with something like arts management. His outreach to writers—to grow our submitters, our readers, our workshop students—has been one of his great skills, too. People feel part of a bigger important thing. That’s especially important and rare during a cultural moment when so many forces are hoping to make us more divisive and combative.
But more. David and I are pretty different people, and we aren’t aesthetically identical either. But I have to say, David has become one of my dearest friends. We have done so many things together — teaching and editing, yes, but traipsing around Italy (during the KR summer workshops in Italy), planning events and programs over a good Brunello, talking for hours about what we’re reading, what kinds of poetry or fiction we want to seek out and support, watching our kids grow up (David’s two and my one are about the same age). I value this friendship as much as I value the work we’ve done at KR.
KR with all its many facets is one of the most important Anglophone literary organizations we now have. I hope people see it as open, inviting, curious, evolving, rather than static and closed-door. David has made all of these things possible. They will not be able to replace him.
• •
Geeta Kothari
Nonfiction Editor
Long before David asked me to join the Kenyon Review as an editor, he was my editor, for the second essay I published. In 1998, I sent this weird thing I’d written—I wasn’t calling it an essay—to Nancy Zafris, who had just started at KR as fiction editor. I’d gotten to know her when she worked at Pitt as a visiting professor, and I sent the piece to her. Recognizing it as an essay, not a short story, she immediately passed it on to David, who contacted me with suggestions for revision. He didn’t promise publication, but I figured even if I couldn’t make the essay work for him, it would much improved. We went back and forth for three months; he was direct and warm and encouraging at a time when I was mired in doubt about my writing. I followed his suggestions, the essay improved, KR published it, and a year later it was chosen for Best American Essays.
Working with David was a gift. I learned what a good editor can do for a writer, and when he asked me to join the editorial staff some years later, I hesitated only because I knew I wouldn’t be able to send him my work anymore.
David’s achievement as an editor goes far beyond the print journal. One thing I’ve noticed since working at KR is that David is good at figuring out what people are good at and then letting them get on with it. When I open the link for the newsletter, read the blog or search for a book review in the archives, it’s hard to remember in 2006, when I first started, we were having discussions about what kind of presence KR would have online.
• •
Andrew Grace
Associate Poetry Editor
In the summer of 2006, my wife, who was then my fiancée, and I found ourselves in a bind. We were to be married in August at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Gambier, but the location where we wanted to have our reception, the Great Hall in Peirce, was closed for renovations. The caterer we had been working with suddenly stopped returning our calls and vanished. As alums of Kenyon, Tory and I wanted to get married where we had fallen in love, but that dream was quickly fading. When David Lynn, who was Tory’s professor and whom I knew through being a Kenyon Review Associate, caught wind of our troubles, he immediately insisted that we have our wedding reception on his front yard. We thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. We had the night of our lives dancing underneath the massive trees in David and Wendy’s gorgeous lawn sloping down to Woodside Drive. David sipped scotch and joked that we should leave the huge tent up in his yard permanently.
This is indicative of David’s leadership of the Kenyon Review: he treats us all like family and does whatever he can for us. The generosity that he showed to Tory and me can be seen on a daily basis in how David treats his KR team, his students, and his colleagues. Sometimes this generosity manifests itself in his intervening on behalf of someone who asks for his help. Other times, it shows itself in the trust that he has in the KR staff to simply let them do their job. What I will miss most about David, as editor of KR and as a fellow professor in the English Department at Kenyon, is the joy that he takes in helping others, whether it’s an encouraging word, a letter of recommendation, or an acre of grass on which to celebrate one’s nuptials.
• •
Nancy Zafris
Writer, Advisory Board Member, former KR Fiction Editor, Workshop Instructor
It was at the Buttles and High intersection in Columbus, Ohio, where I reconnected with him. Yep it’s David Lynn, I thought. I was pushing a baby stroller; he carried a satchel stuffed with papers. David! Nancy! It had been well over a decade since we’d seen each other, but it felt so natural to run into him. I knew he was back at Kenyon, this time as a professor rather than the classmate I knew when we both trod Middle Path as undergrads, him already a celebrated and (I imagined) confident young scholar. I’d heard he was not only a professor, he’d also taken over the editorship of the Kenyon Review, following in the footsteps of John Crowe Ransom, famed poet and founder of New Criticism — just a little thing, no pressure. I had never been published in KR’s pages. It was a dream of mine so outlandish I had never mustered nerve enough to submit.
David and I continued our reunion later that day after his meetings. He sat in my house and we talked until the shadows began to fall. “David, I have mice in my house,” I told him as a teensy one raced behind his easy chair. David gave a shrug. If you know David at all, you’ll know that shrug. Through the years and the various occasions it has meant wry amusement, general snark, or We’ll figure it out, or I’m not pissed but I should be, or Life!, or, as it did that late afternoon, No big deal. Mice, whatever.
If you’re acquainted with David well enough to recognize that shrug, you might also know that it defends against a nature made vulnerable by his loyalty and belief in friendships. It may surprise many people that the intimidating David Lynn can be taken advantage of by this quality, but I’ve always believed he has had to work hard to protect himself. A natural kindness fights with the exacting standards demanded by the editorship of such a historically significant literary journal. His job requires rejection. Rejection after rejection. It’s not easy, and David didn’t like doing it. I never saw him get used to this aspect. It never hardened him. Never in our discussions over a manuscript did he mock the writing or the author. He understood, as a writer himself, how much this enterprise carved someone’s soul. Everyone’s soul was equal and worthy, even if the manuscripts were not.
David’s generosity is also why I felt I could not ask him for a favor. There is something about a bond formed between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, and he was too likely to grant a request even if he shouldn’t. But David himself asked to see a story of mine; and a couple of years later—after we had shared each other’s work for critique, after he’d had me teach at this new summer program he was developing—he surprised me with the offer to become fiction editor of the Kenyon Review. That, of course, was huge for me personally as well as professionally.
And then there are the summer writing workshops. They are so robust and overflowing and highly regarded that it seems they have always just been there, sui generis, existing before David and destined to exist after. But several of us remember those first years as we barely scraped by on David’s determined idea. The barely filled classes were almost like summer camp, a band of participants obligated to their year-round jobs of lawyering, doctoring, carpentering, teaching, softwaring, but creatively drawn to this world of writing during their summers. Write write write, that’s what we did. Word got out. The adult program was soon bursting at the seams. The high school program, also started by David, expanded into two summer sessions stamped with a well-earned national reputation. The baby I had been pushing in the stroller across High Street attended this young writers’ workshop, and I can attest to its life-changing inspiration.
All of this made David busier. He got busier when he secured a board of trustees for the Kenyon Review, giving it financial security in an age when too many great literary magazines were forced to close. He got busier when he established the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement and the fundraising dinners for summer program scholarships. Still, he seemed most energized when getting into the meat of someone’s manuscript where his own creative juices could be charged into a single focus. He missed not being able to do more of this. And despite a recent O. Henry award and a new collection of short fiction, so many of his own writing projects lay unfinished. Time had slipped into an adversarial role with too few hours in a day.
No longer. This is why I celebrate David’s retirement. Now when we sit across from each other, the manuscript we can discuss will be his own. Now he has time to muse over a paragraph, to muse over a sentence, to shrug over a word choice. His own writing projects await. Now David Lynn’s time belongs to them.
• •
Natalie Shapero
Editor at Large, former KR Fellow
David is uncommonly committed to mentoring writers and helping them achieve their creative aspirations. I’ve seen him connect so many people with resources and support they would not otherwise be able to access; it is no exaggeration to say that I’ve seen him change lives. In KR, David has created an unparalleled literary community that keeps growing and shifting and opening in new directions.
• •
Misha Rai
KR Fellow in Prose, 2018-21
In early December 2017, David Lynn with the support of the staff and fellows at the Kenyon Review, changed the course of my writing life. I remember that David called on a Friday, a week or so after my on-campus visit for the KR Fellow in Prose position, and that I had switched my phone off to write all day so he had to leave a message. His booming voice gave nothing away but simply asked that I call back. Panicked—had he found out that I spoke terrible French despite claims to the contrary on my CV? Was he calling to crush my very fragile hopes?—I checked to see the time in Ohio and whether I could ring him back. Then I remembered how at our last meeting, I had reached out, my hand a claw in the air, asking him to please choose me as one of the next fellows. To my horror, in that moment, I conjured up the many emotions his face went through before he laughed in surprise and mumbled a nonresponse as kindly as he could! Later, I would find out that he was acutely aware of how strange and nerve-wracking these interviews could be and that he had wanted me to feel that my best had been enough but there was no way he could tell me that. Palms sweating, I held the mobile phone to my ear, hoping he wouldn’t pick up.
From there on out many moments of the phone conversation are shrouded in darkness, expect at some point David asks me about the weather. I look out at the cold, snowy Salt Lake City night and begin to feel very confused: the weather? What are we, I think, British? He is American, I am Indian, we aren’t built to talk about the weather. Except, at some point during the dinner I ate with the students and staff at Kenyon we did talk about the weather: we mocked the British for their obsession with it. So, I respond in kind, asking David how the weather in Ohio is, to which David laughs his loud, generous laugh before telling me that he is happy to inform me that I have been chosen as the new Kenyon Review Fellow in Prose. Would I like to accept?
I have never asked David this, but I wonder if he needed to go to an ENT specialist the next day. His ears must have been in pain. My response to his question was not in the least professional. I screamed loudly and spoke incoherently and recommended that we terminate the conversation because I couldn’t be trusted to make a bigger fool of myself. I was unbelievably happy! David, being David, which means being single-minded in his quest for task-completion, reminded me that I hadn’t yet accepted to be a fellow at the Review. He needed confirmation so I yelped out a YES before sheepishly asking him if I could not ring off. He waited a beat before saying, yes, and that he was overjoyed at my reaction, his voice full of affection and encouragement.
This beginning—full of kindness and laughter and encouragement and wisdom given—has been characteristic of my relationship with the esteemed David Lynn, who obviously cares very little for his ears, having chosen to mentor me throughout my time at Kenyon. And to that list let me add, how steadfast and committed David has been to my well-being as a Kenyon Review fellow. You see, I am not an American citizen. In the current political climate in these United States of America, where foreigners and immigrants have been made to feel unsafe on a daily basis, it would have been easier for David, and the staff at KR, to choose a fellow with no work permit and immigration baggage. Instead, having decided that my work deserved the time and financial security the fellowship provided, David stood by me through my sometimes-arduous visa process. If my writing life is now healthy, full of time and careful thinking and risks I had not taken before, it is because of my time at Kenyon and because of the people at the Kenyon Review, who are led by the amazing David Lynn.
• •
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Poet, KR Critic at Large
I first met David Lynn when I interviewed for a job at Kenyon College, back in the early 2000s. Though that position went to someone else, it was my great fortune to connect with David, with whom I instantly felt a kinship. He asked me to send him some work, and when he chose one of my Blues poems to publish in the Kenyon Review, it was a real turning point for me. Somehow, that one moment of serendipity evolved into a seventeen-year-long mentoring relationship, with David reading my poems, my fiction, my criticism—so much of my work-in-progress. In particular, his interest in my work on the Blues—and his deep acknowledgement of the Blues as an African American cultural production—helped me to discover an intellectual yet ancestral direction for my creative writing. Sometimes, David has published what I sent him, and sometimes, he’s let me know, I haven’t sent him my best work and he can’t give me a spot in the journal. Whenever he’s turned down the work, surely I’m disappointed, but I’m never hurt, because David’s counsel is always spot on. Though I am an African American woman and well, David isn’t, he truly gets my artistic vision like very few others. It is impossible to convey what he has meant for me and my creative journey throughout these years. David’s presence in my life is a balm, a blessing.
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Caitlin Horrocks
Advisory Board Member, former KR Fiction Editor, former Kenyon student
During my time as a student I took a fiction workshop from David and worked on KR, but I didn’t expect him to even remember me, let alone keep track of me, after I graduated. But as my path eventually lead me to grad school and jobs in creative writing, including yearly trips to the AWP (Associated Writers and Writing Programs) Conference, I would always see David at the KR table, and he always knew exactly who I was and what I was up to. Over time, he reached out to offer me truly life-changing opportunities with KR. But even when I had no affiliation with the magazine, he still made me feel like a permanent part of the Kenyon literary family. Community is important to him, and he’s worked hard to create and maintain one that encompasses the countless and ever-increasing numbers of people who have been his students, those who have worked on or been published in the magazine, those who attended or worked with KR programs, the magazine’s readers and submitters, and many more.
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Roger Rosenblatt
Writer, KR Advisory Board Member
David Lynn is an anomaly among editors. He thinks about his writers, follows their work, wishes them well. Entrusted with the monumental history of the Kenyon Review, he nonetheless regarded the Review as a small-town event, a concert on a village green, that writers, and readers, could call home. As a result, reading KR has always felt like returning to a time when literature was at the center of the universe, and words counted for something, for everything.
And people counted, too. In the pages of KR, one will find the moral essence of the country at its best—all colors, all voices, gathered in a glorious mess. I do not know if such things are products of “vision” (that easy word associated with leadership), or of character. And I suppose it doesn’t matter. But David’s character—kind, careful, extending the self toward others—surely drove and shaped his editorial success. He’s a first-class writer, so that undoubtedly guided his taste. He’s also a first-class person. For twenty-six years, the exercise of that combination has been formidable.
I turned from journalism to imaginative writing only thirteen years ago. When I published an early piece in KR, I felt respectable, like one who at last had entered the company of the valued and worthy. It may take a while before I judge myself either, but I know when I’m blessed. To see one’s name in KR, there’s nothing like it. Over the years, a couple of my students have placed their work in KR. The event has made their literary lives.
With all the high-flying reputation and public activities of the Review, David has always kept his eye on the groundlings (being a lifelong Detroit Tigers fan will do that to you). He has seen to it that the grand and lofty awards dinners have been good for everyone, especially the young. Emerging writers (and who is not) know him to be on their side and at their side. Never has the power of editorship been used more generously.
He leaves KR in magnificent shape, which is another mark of leadership—leaving a place bigger and better than one found it. He leaves it, all right. But I know that those who take over will be grateful he’s not far away. He’s still too young to serve as a presiding deity, or an eminence grise or even an eminence grist. Instead, let him simply step off the bandstand on the green, having left the village content, and a song in the air.
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Rick Landesberg
Design Consultant
A number of years ago David called upon me and my design office to help rethink the visual form of the print journal and the website. This naturally led to a process of determining how all the many aspects of the KR universe visually connect to each other. Under David’s guidance this proved to be the healthiest of processes, a robust and inclusive multi-month conversation. Together, we sought to articulate (to paraphrase one graphic-identity expert) “what the Review is, who is it for, and why should that audience care.” Ever-present was David’s desire to find the look, the vibe, that would reflect that healthy tension of rigor and inventiveness.
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Khaled Mattawa
Poet and translator; editor, the Michigan Quarterly Review
During David’s time as editor of KR, the magazine and indeed the whole world of book publishing and journalism went through a major upheaval. What’s remarkable is that KR has not only survived but indeed thrived as a literary publication both in print and online. Elegant in appearance and content, the magazine has gone about its business as a trailblazing publication without fuss, always gaining new admirers and continually serving as a standard bearer and a necessary window into the literary creativity of the US and the rest of the world. It’s also been amazing to see the various new and exciting projects that KR has been engaged in as a literary institution and as a cultural pillar in its community. I find this mix of deep focus on the art of writing alongside a genuine investment in the community to be incredibly exciting and existentially affirming. David has done a brilliant job at KR and has helped make it one of the best literary organization in the country. Congratulations, David. And thank you!
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T.C. Boyle
Writer, winner of the 2019 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
The Kenyon Review has become one of the most vital venues for the literary community under David Lynn’s long and venerable tenure. I am honored to have had him select so many of my stories for publication over the years, and I will miss his guidance and friendship. In a world of chaos, political discord, and addiction to screens big and little, we need more editors like him.
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Meghan O’Rourke
Editor, the Yale Review
David really reinvented the Kenyon Review, figuring out—presciently—how to take the prestige of the journal and reimagine it for the digital era, bringing literature to more readers than ever via KROnline without losing the pleasures of the quarterly. This isn’t easy, and few other journal editors have seen quite so clearly what needed to happen and how to do it. We readers are the lucky beneficiaries.
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Carolyn Kuebler
Editor, the New England Review
David has always been someone I could turn to for advice, backup, and candid talk about the challenges of publishing a literary magazine. His vision and generosity have contributed not only to the Kenyon Review and its dazzling array of programs, but to other literary magazines and organizations who share the same struggles and passions. David is a forward-looking editor with old-school charm.
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Claire Oleson
Former student, Kenyon Class of 2019, former KR Associate and intern
I started at Kenyon in the fall of 2015 and the same semester became an associate at KR, through which I met David Lynn. My freshmen year, I was anxious and intimidated by starting college but also deeply eager to grow as a reader and writer. I started volunteering for everything at KR I could and ended up getting to speak to David at readings and sample classes. He was kind enough to thank me for my engagement and my questions and invested enough to encourage me to keep attending events, to keep standing up and speaking, and engaging socially in ways that went against the grain of my introversion but towards my growth as a person. I was struck not only by his generosity with his time, but also with his willingness to let me know my voice was one worth some honing and amplifying. David Lynn, and the Kenyon Review he conducted, was not only a place where I grew as a writer and speaker, but also one that offered needed camaraderie. It was and is a workplace where I felt comfortable being asked to stretch myself and a place where I was comfortable being forthright with my superiors and coworkers. I never had to question whether I could be out at work, whether my girlfriend and I were safe at Finn House. There was no question. It was and is a place where I could be authentic and where I could be challenged as a student, writer, and person simultaneously. David Lynn was and is an enormous part of that.
Nearing the middle of the fall of 2018, I accosted David outside of Finn House to ask if he would teach an independent study on book-review writing for me in what would be my last semester at Kenyon. He was clearly on his way to a meeting and I expected a soft assent that he might consider thinking about the course, but what happened instead was David gave me a quick affirmation, an enthusiastic and immediate yes. After four years and two summers working at the Review, I knew that David was busy with staff, students, and professorial peers, and with juggling the roles he fulfilled for the college and for KR. Despite this, he added time and space to take yet another person’s writing seriously. He engaged with my work at the level of the word and genuinely considered me to be someone who could make writing at least part of their career. This support and investment go beyond mere instruction and beyond the call of leading a class—it speaks to David’s willingness to commit himself to those willing to show they are committed to language.
However KR is inherited, its inheritors will be immediately gifted with not only a powerful literary tradition, but also with a critically humane one. Because of David Lynn, KR is an enlightening and humanizing space, both as a journal and as a physical house on Kenyon’s campus. What a lovely thing to have known, what a lovely thing that KR gets to keep in its blood, its offices, its occasional basement mice, and in its words.
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Tyler Guerin
Former student, Kenyon Class of 2019, former KR Associate and intern
In the first week of Advanced Fiction with David Lynn, we discussed “The Toughest Indian in the World,” a short story by Sherman Alexie. What I remember most from the conversation was David’s insistence that my classmates and I were “too smart.” This marked the beginning of a semester-long crusade against the brain inasmuch as it interferes with the heart in the art of storytelling. What I am saying is that David taught me how the fiction writer must be one who feels more than he thinks. It is not themes or symbols or allusions which make a story. (“Those things will naturally arise later,” I remember David telling me once.) Stories are made of those sticky human feelings—melancholy, lust, joy, envy, and all their other friends.
Needless to say, David took my writing to a level I never thought possible. But what good is a mentor if he only affects the apprentice’s craft? No, David changed both the way I write and the way I live. He was never one to see his personal life—his contemplation, his relationships with others—as less important than his art. There was a day once—I believe during my independent study on the modern short story with David my senior year—where we, as we were wont to do, moved from the narrow focus of a single short story to a wider discussion of life. “More than anything else,” David said. “I just want you to live a happy and fulfilling life.” While art may captivate us with its portrayal of those complex human emotions, it will never be a match for the mother from which they come: the always impressive life itself. Living over writing—that is one of the many lessons from David I’ll keep tucked in a pocket of my heart for as long as I’m around.
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Danielle Bishop
Former student, Kenyon Class of 2011, former KR Associate
I first met David in the fall of 2007, when I became a student associate at the Kenyon Review, and went on to spend the following four years working with David and the rest of the KR team. Throughout these years, David became a mentor to me, sharing advice on everything from making the most of English culture in my junior year abroad at Oxford to my first job after graduating from Kenyon and the importance of living a contented life beyond that.
One of my favorite memories of David is the time I met with him in his Finn House office, amidst the endless books and file folders, near the end of my senior year. David showed much care and concern for health issues I was having at the time, as well as providing encouragement for my upcoming Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in Spain. He advised me to put off attending graduate school for at least a few years so that I could get out into the real world and be sure to forge my own path rather than following one that so often feels pre-set for young graduates. This turned out to be fantastic advice. However, the moment that caused the most impact for me (and has stayed with me ever since) is when David shared some of his lively stories about bar-tending in England in the years immediately after his own graduation. In addition to having some priceless adventures, he also told me that those years, though not necessarily “productive” or “successful” in the eyes of others, allowed him to learn more about himself, about other people, and about what he wanted out of life than any other position before or since. David was one of the first people I encountered in academic life who praised traditional success, yet also underscored the greater importance of living the life you want to live. His keen advice and care for my long-term future made a strong impact in that moment, as I (and so many other graduates) had certainly been taught to achieve, but perhaps not to prioritize our own happiness. That day he sowed the seed of what has now become a key component of my worldview: the importance of living, working, and creating in a way that makes you deeply happy with the life you choose.
Another small anecdote: Each year, KR threw a welcome gathering for new student associates and interns, and David gave an introductory speech that included sound advice for choosing which submissions should be passed up to the editors for further consideration. David mentioned that any great piece of writing should inspire both “surprise and delight” in its reader. This phrase became a kind of gold standard among student readers, and, coincidentally, has informed my choices of many things in life: which books to read, which opportunities to take, which friends to make, and more.
On a broader note, as a boss and a mentor, David is insightful, caring, and deeply genuine in all situations. I have always appreciated his ability to connect with everyone—from the president of the college to a student associate on the first day of the job—and his way of treating others with the utmost respect. David’s leadership at the Kenyon Review not only cemented the magazine’s success on an international level by introducing many innovative elements that keep KR consistently fresh and exciting, but also created a remarkable work environment: one in which hierarchy comes second to human bonds. Every member of the KR team was always willing to roll up his/her sleeves and get to work, and there was never a bad moment to pop by someone’s office to ask a question. This kind of close-knit bond between colleagues of many levels is so rare, and I still think fondly of my time reading submissions in the Finn House basement, chatting with David and other editors in the hallways, and reveling in the magic of Gambier summers. It is not an exaggeration to say that, nearly ten years after graduation, I still consider David and the other members of the KR team my family. Despite all this time away from Gambier and my moves to multiple countries, it still thrills me to keep in touch with David and the rest of the team, swapping periodic life updates. I will always be grateful to David and the Kenyon Review for providing the best possible foundation for my personal and professional growth, and for showing me how quality work and human connections are not mutually exclusive, but rather are the keys to building a successful, fulfilling career (and life!).
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Aaron Davis
Former student, Kenyon Class of 2019
I had always been resistant to mentors. I can be headstrong, uncommunicative, prone to disappearing. The truth is, I never really looked for them. I was certain, foolishly, that I could keep my head down and make my own way. Then David noticed me, and all that went out the window.
I remember I rolled out of bed, late for our first meeting, and sprinted to his office. I didn’t know David at this point, except by reputation. And he didn’t know me at all, except as the quiet, blonde kid in his class who couldn’t stop writing about Cleveland. I expected to be admonished for my tardiness, my laziness, maybe even for smelling like an ashtray all the time. But instead the first words out of David’s mouth were, “I don’t know what happened to you, but it made you a writer.” I didn’t quite get what he meant at the time, and I’m still constantly learning and relearning it, but I’ve come to understand this about David: he believes in literature as a vocation, as something you can’t shake from your bones even if you might want to sometimes. He went on to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, and he meant if I really wanted it more than I wanted comfort or stability, then I would have to turn my back on a straightforward life. I didn’t yet realize that he was talking about sacrifice, about giving up a part of yourself. And I certainly didn’t yet realize how terrifying it can be to give yourself in service of something so much larger. But as I come to understand more of what he meant, I realize that David has not only been a mentor to me, but a steadfast example for us all of the courage necessary to live an artistic life.
Of all the lessons David has taught me, the most important, in my opinion, is still that very first one: don’t flinch. The life of a writer, an editor, an artist, is one filled with uncertainty. There will be times when the only thing you are certain of is that the sky is falling, that you can feel pieces of it dusting your shoulders. But don’t flinch. The second you do, you’ve lost your footing. Trust yourself, trust the writing, trust your struggle. David has lived by this, in his words and actions, and I was lucky enough to learn by his example. How many times have the small presses been declared dead in his twenty-six years as editor? David didn’t flinch once. And the Review is better for it, literature is better for it, we are all better for it.