David H. Lynn is the editor emeritus of The Kenyon Review, a professor of English, and special assistant to the president of the college. He was the editor of the Review from 1994 to 2020. As an author, he received a 2016 O. Henry Award for “Divergence.” His latest collection, Children of God: New & Selected Stories, was published in 2019 by Braddock Avenue Books.
Interview
Summer 2007
A Conversation with Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan received the 2006 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. He is the author of nine novels, with a new one to appear in the summer of 2007, along […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2007
Editor’s Notes
Beginning in this issue of KR you will find the first installment of “Just Not for Us,” a new series of essays by Roger Rosenblatt. For those of you blessed […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2007
Editor’s Notes
It’s the Internet, stupid! I confess I don’t recall when it first came to me that we’d be wise to develop a Web site for The Kenyon Review. Certainly not […]
Editor's Notes
Autumn 2004
Editor’s Notes
How much is a fine story worth? What monetary value does a superb poem possess? How much—and this is the inexorable point—should authors be paid for their long, solitary work? […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2003
Editor’s Notes
This special double—truly double!—issue of The Kenyon Review offers an abundance of perspectives, in stories, poems, and essays, from across the globe. Through this work we explore the complicated relationship […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2001
Editor’s Notes
I am delighted to announce that Beth Ann Fennelly’s first book of poems, The Room of Everywhere, has been selected by David Baker as the winner of the inaugural Kenyon […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2001
Editor’s Notes
Let me open with a note about the upcoming Nobel issue, Spring 2001: As announced in autumn, The Kenyon Review is collaborating with the Nobel Museum in Stockholm and with […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 1997
Editor’s Notes
The Kenyon Review has a new Board of Trustees. The names of its members appear on our masthead. This is more revolutionary than may leap out at first blush. Let […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 1996
Editor’s Notes
Deadlines and absences did not allow a proper adieu to Robie Macauley in our last issue. Robie, who died last November, was tied to The Kenyon Review in manifold ways. […]
Editor's Notes
Autumn 2006
Editor’s Notes
Ian McEwan, the British novelist, will receive this year’s Kenyon Review Award for Literary Review Achievement. The trustees of this magazine will honor Mr. McEwan at the Four Seasons Restaurant […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2006
Editor’s Notes
We here introduce a new and regular feature for KR: “The Casual Reader” by André Bernard. André, who served as the long-time editor in chief at Harcourt before assuming the […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2006
Editor’s Notes
How should success be recalibrated when initial goals have been fulfilled and yet the world continues its rapid change on all sides? That was the task faced by trustees of […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2007
Editor’s Notes: KR Award—New Literary Festival—New Fiction Editor (Whew!)
On Thursday, November 8, the Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood will be presented with the 2007 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. Presented by the KR trustees at the […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2007
Editor’s Notes
Every literary journal has its own aesthetic—a voice or style or feel that it comes to represent over a period of multiple issues and years. This may have to do […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2004
Editor’s Notes
Every two years or so we have been devoting an issue of The Kenyon Review to a single topic or theme. This seems a reasonable balance with our general issues. […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2010
[Editor’s Notes]: W.S. Merwin: Then and Now
In 1953, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, The Kenyon Review awarded its first fellowships. These were intended to identify superlative younger writers and free them from the struggle to […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2010
Editor’s Notes
Over the past few years I’ve spent a fair bit of time in these notes and elsewhere musing about the direction and future of literary printing. Even the word itself […]
Writing in Code: Literature and the Genome
Winter 2006
Editor’s Notes
Writing in Code: Literature and the Genome From start to finish, collecting material for an issue on the human genome project has been something of a race to discovery, and […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2004
Editor’s Notes
What will follow is a series of celebratory announcements. But as I write these notes we have received the unhappy news of George Plimpton’s death. And so it seems fitting […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2003
Editor’s Notes
❦ Teachers have always been among our best and most faithful readers. Not only do they care passionately about what is new and exciting in the literary world, many of […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2003
Editor’s Notes
❦ On November 12, 2002, the Trustees of The Kenyon Review presented E. L. Doctorow with the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. Although you may already have heard this […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2002
Editor’s Notes
Tom Bigelow, managing editor of The Kenyon Review since 1998, died on June 9. He was 47 years old. I sit here using the occasion of these notes merely to […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2002
Editor’s Notes
We were saddened to learn, in January, of the passing of Christer Strömholm, the extraordinary Swedish photographer. Less well known in the United States than elsewhere in the world, Strömholm’s […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2002
Editor’s Notes
I sit down to write these notes in the week following the events of September 11, 2001. The death and destruction in New York, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania have […]
Editor's Notes
Summer/ Autumn 1997
Editor’s Notes
One of the questions most often asked of an editor—entirely reasonable, all but unanswerable—is to name what, precisely, one looks for in reading through submissions to a magazine. (In KR’s […]
Editor's Notes
Nov/Dec 2018
Editor’s Notes: When a Glorious Past May Also Be a Burden
For many years any description or overview of the Kenyon Review has begun, understandably enough, at the beginning. In 1939, so the story goes, John Crowe Ransom, a noted poet […]
Editor's Notes
Sept/Oct 2018
Editor’s Notes: A Poet of Many Dimensions
The artwork on the cover of this issue is, it seems to me, deeply mysterious and puzzling. If you devote the time to sit and stare, just as you might […]
Editor's Notes
July/Aug 2018
Editor’s Notes: What Place for Books?—Libraries as Essential Laboratories
The vast collection of papyrus scrolls in the library of Alexandria was considered one of the wonders of the world before its destruction by fire (or series of fires, military […]
Editor's Notes
May/June 2018
Editor’s Notes: Literary Activism and the World We Live In
We live in a moment of political and cultural turmoil. To an unprecedented degree, individuals from across the vast spectrum of our society are demanding basic human dignity along with […]
Editor's Notes
Mar/Apr 2018
Editor’s Notes: The Exciting Program of “KR”‘s Summer Programs
As I write these notes, winter has just barreled into Gambier. The trees are stark and bare, the sky a pale, sere blue. Our students (and, yes, we instructors as […]
Editor's Notes
Nov/Dec 2017
Editor’s Notes
My special treat: returning to the stories, poems, and essays that will appear in an upcoming issue of this journal in order to write a new set of editor’s notes. […]
Editor's Notes
Sept/Oct 2017
Editor’s Notes
Surprise, delight, and mastery: these together are the sine qua non of successful literary writing, as I’ve suggested here before. They represent the qualities editors are always looking for in […]
Editor's Notes
May/June 2017
Editor’s Notes
The one-hundredth anniversaries this spring of the births of Robert Lowell and Peter Taylor provide the chance to celebrate not only their achievements as writers—and they were two of the […]
Editor's Notes
Jan/Feb 2017
Editor’s Notes: What Place Literary Contests?
As in recent years, we are pleased to launch the new volume year by presenting here the winner and runners-up of the 2016 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest. Our final […]
Editor's Notes
Nov/Dec 2016
Editor’s Notes: Not Opening the Gates—Tearing Them Down
Over the last couple of years one of the most popular features in the Kenyon Review electronic newsletter has been the column “Why We Chose It.” Focusing on some specific […]
Editor's Notes
July/Aug 2016
Editor’s Notes: Submissions Then and Now
Not so long ago—the later 1970s—I wandered vaguely into the elegant Jeffersonian chambers of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Lounging with a newspaper in his wing-backed chair sat the legendary editor […]
Editor's Notes
May/June 2016
Editor’s Notes: Literature and the Anthropocene
Prophecy generally makes me cringe. Too many people in our world are too very certain about, well, everything that’s coming next. Yet one exception does stand before us and it’s […]
Editor's Notes
Mar/Apr 2016
Editor’s Notes
Don’t be fooled by the playful beauty of our covers or the carefully crafted layout and typeface on pages within. The changes that have come to the Kenyon Review over […]
Editor's Notes
Jan/Feb 2016
Editor’s Notes
Welcome to the 2016 volume year of the Kenyon Review. How swiftly has flown the past year! We’d anticipated it with such hopes, and not a little consternation, featuring the […]
Editor's Notes
Nov/Dec 2015
Editor’s Notes
Just what makes an essay literary? I’ve been challenged on that recently, not least because I’d like to extend the capaciousness of creative categories. These notes provide an early opportunity. […]
Editor's Notes
Sept/Oct 2015
Editor’s Notes
As I write these notes, it’s midsummer in Gambier. A cool, rainy year so far, but our green and lovely village is teeming with writers. Hundreds of high school students […]
Editor's Notes
July/Aug 2015
Editor’s Notes
How does one become the editor of a literary journal? In truth, there’s no simple or direct answer. Many hopefuls, struck with the hankering, simply create their own publication ex […]
Editor's Notes
May/June 2015
Editor’s Notes
One of the advantages of our new format—fewer pages and more frequent publication—is a greater flexibility and the opportunity to be more adventurous. In this issue of the Kenyon Review […]
Editor's Notes
Mar/Apr 2015
Editor’s Notes
News by definition is bad news. This we all know. Schools are under-funded, teachers under attack. Publishers are consolidating. Video of varied glow seduces or distracts our students. Yet for […]
Editor's Notes
Jan/Feb 2015
Editor’s Notes
I am delighted to present this first issue of a new volume year and with it the boldest revisions of design and frequency in the seventy-five-year trajectory of the Kenyon […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2014
Editor’s Notes
This is the last new quarterly issue of The Kenyon Review you’ll hold in your hands. Don’t worry—the news is all good. Beginning in January 2015 we will introduce a […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2014
Editor’s Notes
Not so very long ago publishing a literary journal was a rather lonely enterprise. Every three months one launched a new issue into a great maw of silence. Oh, we’d […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2014
Editor’s Notes
Isn’t it amazing that paper and print defy banishment? For all the technological innovation, for all the prognostication, many people simply prefer to heft a book or journal in their […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2014
Editor’s Notes
You’ve already guessed that something’s up. What with Ellen Priest’s brush strokes swooshing colors across the cover and then, a page in, the table of contents adazzle with talented authors, […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2013
Editor’s Notes
Five Years on … In 2008, after fifteen years of editing these pages, I felt for the first time that we didn’t have enough of them—that we were turning away […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2013
Editor’s Notes
In compliance with FDA regulations, The Kenyon Review here presents its annual protocol for the safe implementation of this product, its active and inactive ingredients, and the possible effects on […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2013
Editor’s Notes
This issue of our journal appears shortly before the start of National Poetry Month in April. On the 18th of that month we’ll also mark Poem in Your Pocket Day […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2013
Editor’s Notes
In looking through the current Table of Contents and reading once again what is, if I may say, quite a remarkable collection of stories, poems, and essays, I’m struck by […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2012
Editor’s Notes
Elie Wiesel resists easy classification. He is an author of power, fearlessness, insight. He is also—and perhaps this is foremost—a witness to atrocity, to the paradoxical human capacities for evil […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2012
Editor’s Notes
Well over 400 applications whizzed electronically into our offices during the winter, each in hope of capturing a new Kenyon Review Fellowship. I confess to feeling somewhat overwhelmed. Almost all […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2012
Editor’s Notes
In November 2011, the trustees of The Kenyon Review honored Simon Schama with their annual Award for Literary Achievement. This was something of a departure, given the authors thus honored […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2012
Editor’s Notes
Balancing Act Ah, the first issue of a volume year. One of those mile posts that possesses little intrinsic meaning—and other than a new series of our celebrated cover photographs, […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2011
Editor’s Notes
The Kenyon Review Fellowships (Redux) One of the proudest legacies of The Kenyon Review was the awarding of fellowships to writers of great promise and significant early achievement. These grants, […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2011
Editor’s Notes
Summer! Glorious to be upon us, yet certainly not as quiet, as restful as in days of yore. Or is that merely a halcyon illusion? I suspect I’m not alone […]
Introduction
Spring 2011
Editor’s Notes
Every few years, like most publications, The Kenyon Review sends out a readership survey. We are eager to know something about the people who read this journal and, more recently, […]
Introduction
Winter 2011
Editor’s Notes
Although I can certainly be an impulsive guy, I rarely accept a story or poem for The Kenyon Review after a quick first reading. Oh, I can reject a piece […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2009
Editor’s Notes: Print vs. Internet: An Ongoing Conversation
I’m about to finish writing a new short story. To whom should I send it? That’s become a more interesting question in recent years. Instead of the print journals in […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2009
Editor’s Notes
When, early on in my editorship, managing editor Cy Wainscott cajoled me into adding a note to the beginning of each issue, his notion was that I should offer pithy […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2009
Editor’s Notes
This seventieth anniversary issue of The Kenyon Review is not exceptional so much as exemplary. Within these pages we offer a model of what KR has aspired to across those […]
Editor's Notes
Fall 2008
Editor’s Notes
The KR Treasure Trove About the time this magazine lands in mailboxes and bookstores, back issues of The Kenyon Review—nearly seventy years of stories, poems, reviews, and essays—will be available […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2008
Editor’s Notes
As I’ve discussed on other occasions, The Kenyon Review has seen its mission evolve in recent years. From the urgency of simple survival—which has been achieved thanks to the faith […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2008
Editor’s Notes: Brave New World, and Not
As I write, the Gambier skies are gray. Patches of snow from last week’s storm still cluster on the grass outside my window. It’s December 2007. I’m perfectly aware, of […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 2008
Editor’s Notes
You are holding in your hands—or perhaps viewing on a video screen—the first comprehensive redesign of The Kenyon Review in several decades. Oh, there have been plenty of changes along […]
Book Reviews
Winter 2005
Love and Death, and Animals Too
Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee. Viking, 2003. 233 pages. $21.95. I first encountered Elizabeth Costello, the eponymous central character of J. M. Coetzee’s latest fiction, not within its […]
Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize
Autumn 2004
On the First “Kenyon Review” Poetry Prize for Young Writers
Young Writers Commentary The Kenyon Review is best known for its contributions to the literary world as a journal. In recent years, however, KR has endeavored to expand its mission […]
Book Reviews
Summer 2004
Virtues of Ambition
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 290 pp. $24.00. Ashoke Ganguli rides a train from Calcutta to visit his grandfather, a retired professor of European […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 2001
Editors’ Notes
Creativity—the drive to generate something new from the materials about us or from the materials within our own imagination, to discover what we didn’t know or couldn’t see or simply […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 2000
Editor’s Notes
The Spring 2001 edition of The Kenyon Review will, I’m delighted to announce, be produced in collaboration with the Nobel Museum in Stockholm and with Stand, the most influential literary […]
Celebration of Robert Lowell
Winter 2000
Welcome: Celebration of Robert Lowell
Good evening. I’m David Lynn, editor of The Kenyon Review, and I’m delighted to welcome you to this weekend’s Celebration of Robert Lowell. With this event we also mark the […]
Editor's Notes
Spring 1998
Editor’s Notes
As I write these notes The Kenyon Review is planning a very special event. In October 1998 KR will sponsor a three-day Celebration of Robert Lowell in Gambier, Ohio, thanks […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 1998
Editor’s Notes
Our masthead describes us as an “international journal of literature, culture, and the arts.” A lofty claim, perhaps, but a look at what we have put together for you in […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Winter 1996
A Revaluation: Peter Taylor Commentary
This is what it is like to be young forever!” whispers Miss Louisa Dorset to the appalled and enthralled young people gathered round. She has already danced her half-hour ritual […]
Editor's Notes
Winter 1996
Editor’s Notes
In this issue we introduce a new and continuing feature: a Kenyon Classic paired with a contemporary reappraisal. During its first series, from 1939 through 1969, The Kenyon Review published […]
Editor's Notes
Summer 1995
To Our Readers
A Call for Manuscripts for a Special Issue I am pleased to announce that Lewis Hyde will be guest editor of a special issue of The Kenyon Review on “American […]
Autumn 1994
To Our Readers
To Our Readers This is the last issue in which Marilyn Hacker’s name will appear at the top of the masthead (opposite page). Beginning with our Winter 1995 issue, my […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1992
The Lost Brother
Street of Lost Brothers by Arnošt Lustig. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990. 207 pages. $32.95; $12.95, paper. A handful of survivors huddles in the town hall, hiding from the final […]
In Memoriam
In Memoriam: Umberto Eco
We mourn the passing of Umberto Eco, a rare polymath of a man and a marvelous, witty, inventive author. Among his many honors, Mr. Eco received the Kenyon Review Award […]
In Memoriam
In Memoriam: Philip Levine
We are deeply saddened by the passing of longtime contributor and friend Philip Levine. A working-class boy from Detroit, Levine never forgot his roots. Indeed, the harsh industrial world of […]
In Memoriam
In Memoriam: E.L. Doctorow
As the world now knows, Edgar Doctorow passed away on July 21st. This is a loss of both a great novelist—he will surely be acknowledged as one of the American […]