April 2021

Brigitte Leschhorn Arrocha Wins Nonfiction Contest

Congratulations to Brigitte Leschhorn Arrocha, who has won KR’s third annual short nonfiction contest with the essay “And We Inherit Everything.” Roxane Gay, who judged the contest, wrote that every line in the piece “is lush, exquisite. ‘We live at the mouth of grief,’ the essay begins, and from there we are taken on a lyrical journey about grief, yes, but also the wounds of family and the myths of the people to whom we belong.” Arrocha lives in Andover, MA and works as an English teacher at Phillips Academy. Her winning essay was chosen from over 500 submissions. Arrocha will receive a scholarship to attend the KR Writers Workshop, and her essay will be published in the Nov/Dec 2021 Kenyon Review. Also appearing in that issue will be the pieces by the two runners-up, Christian Butterfield (“Blue Whale Challenge”) and dm armstrong (“Translating”). Honorable mentions were awarded to Sandrine Tunezerwe (“Ndagukunda”) and Madeline Horan (“The Quiet Limit of the World”). Click here to see Gay’s comments about all of the winners.

A New Offering for Lovers of Literature

The Kenyon Review is delighted to introduce the Rosse Event Series, a virtual program of readings, panels, guest authors, and faculty conversations devoted to the art of literature and the challenges of creation. Starting in June with an opening night event featuring George Saunders and Daniel Torday, the series will also include readings by poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers who serve as faculty members of the KR Writers Workshop. The Rosse Series is linked to this summer’s workshop schedule—June 20–26 and July 11–17—and is included for workshop participants, but is also available to the general public. The essentials:

• You can purchase the Rosse Event Series at our early-bird rates from April 1–30. The Series is open to all.
• Your ticket includes admission to twenty-two online events—keynote lectures by guest authors plus “In Conversation” sessions with KR Writers Workshop faculty.
• Every event includes a question-and-answer session or other opportunities for conversation with the writers.
• You can view the events live and also replay them later, until September 1.

The Rosse Event Series is available for purchase now, and student discounts are available. To learn more and purchase the Series, click here.

A Fond Farewell to Anna Duke Reach

April began on a bittersweet note for the Kenyon Review family, as Anna Duke Reach retired after more than fifteen years as—well, the title was director of programs, but the reality was magician, collaborative brainstormer, assignment juggler, big dreamer and maker of dreams come true, graceful fixer, generous soul. Every summer she and her team brought to life the workshops that widened the literary horizons of countless writers while expanding the Review’s mission. “Anna has been masterful in building and nurturing the Writers Workshop and Young Writers,” said KR Editor-in-Chief Nicole Terez Dutton. Read more about Anna’s contributions to KR, which went well beyond her extraordinary success with the Writers Workshop and Young Writers.

Art and The Moment

Voting: powerful, precious, imperiled. Never before has voting seemed so fraught as in this shattering season, when an American presidential election crested in an assault on the Capitol. This past year we got a taste of voting’s fragility. And the realization that we can’t take voting for granted was also a reminder that voting has long been a fragile right—not only in foreign countries but also, for many, in our own. It was this recognition that inspired Art and the Moment, a special feature to which we will devote KROnline through the end of April. In the spirit of Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s earlier KROnline essay “Things Ain’t Always Gone Be This Way,” KR Fellow Misha Rai reached out to writers and other artists from around the world, inviting them to reflect on the meaning of the vote. They tell stories both public and private, bear witness to the power of voting and the precarious conditions under which votes are cast, and reveal the humanity within every act of voting. Read Rai’s introduction and the first essays in this project.

Exuberant Charm and a Spine of Steel

When Misha Rai sat down to write the introduction for Art and the Moment, the Kenyon Review’s special project on voting (see story above), it was natural that she would turn to personal memories. Rai has an instinct for storytelling, a style brimming with narrative warmth, and a gift for interweaving layers of time and meaning, uncovering flashes when the wider world, with its conflict and complexity, surprises ordinary life. Read a profile of Rai, who will soon complete her stint as KR’s Fellow in Prose.

A Spring Bouquet of Readings

KR’s virtual reading series continues this month and in May with appearances by some extraordinary literary talents—starting today, April 6. Join us on Zoom for the following events, all of which include question-and-answer sessions after the readings:

• Tuesday April 6, 7:00 p.m. EST, Chang-rae Lee and Misha Rai.
  Lee is the author of five novels, including, most recently, On Such a Full Sea. His work, which deals with the Asian-American experience, has won numerous awards. Rai, currently the Kenyon Review Fellow in Prose (see profile, above), is a fiction writer and essayist whose work has been widely published and recognized in foundation support as well as by awards. She is currently completing her first novel.
• Tuesday, April 13, 7:00 p.m. EST, Linda Hogan.
  An internationally recognized writer of poetry, fiction, and essays, Hogan is a member of the Chickasaw Nation (and its writer in residence). Her work includes the collection Dark, Sweet: New and Selected Poems and the novel Mean Spirit, a Pulitzer Prize nominee.
• Tuesday, May 4, 7:00 p.m. EST, Tiana Clark.
  Winner of the 2021 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship and many prizes, Clark is the author of the collections I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood and Equilibrium. She teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Click here to register for these Zoom-based events.

Writing the Spirit

Places are still available in the prose section of this summer’s Spiritual Writing Workshop, to be held virtually from June 20 to 26. The workshop will be led by Jamie Quatro, widely praised for both her story collection, I Want to Show You More, and her novel, Fire Sermon. Through writing and sharing fresh work as well as discussing readings, participants will explore questions of being along with questions of craft. The workshop welcomes writers at varying levels of experience. Click here to learn more and to apply.

In My Time: A Narrative Space

True or false: the writer creates in order to forget the truth that nothing happens for a reason. Carla Diaz poses this provocative question in her essay “An Effort Toward Wholeness,” in which an email from an old family friend sparks memory-laced musings on how writers struggle to fashion meaning and identity. Diaz’s essay is one of four pieces in the latest collection of In My Time: A Narrative Space, a literary project engaging the KR and Kenyon communities in the issues and challenges of this pandemic year. This collection opens with an introduction by KR Fellow Misha Rai, who notes that, at a time when circumstances have forced us into “deep introspection, whether we like it or not,” these four pieces explore “the ways in which this internalization has bludgeoned through our consciousness.” Also in the collection are: “The First Black Bachelorette,” a poem by Tiana Clark; “Slow,” an essay by Susan Stinson; and “the best story is about home because that’s the story part,” a poem by Nate Marshall. Click here to read these pieces—all originally published in the Kenyon Review or KROline—and to learn more about the project, including supplementary resources, plus writing activities and virtual public events.

From the KR Blog: “In Which We Talk about Moose: A Conversation with Marcia Butler”

BY GEETA KOTHARI, NONFICTION EDITOR

March 11, 2021

When I was an oboist, for many summers I’d spend a week performing at a chamber music festival in central Maine. That’s when I discovered moose and developed an (unhealthy, some might say) obsession. Mainers told me lots of stories, some tragic, some miraculous, some hilarious. But I was most taken by one story told to me by the woman who ran the festival. Read the rest of the interview, in which Butler talks about her second novel, Oslo, Maine, in which the main characters are a moose and the moose’s “alter ego,” a twelve-year-old violin prodigy.

APRIL 2021 
CONTENTS
Nonfiction Winner
Rosse Event Series
A Fond Farewell
Art and The Moment
Profile: Misha Rai
Reading Series
Writers Workshops
In My Time
From the Blog

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