August 2017

Apply Now for a KR Fellowship: Two Years to Write, Read, and Teach

The Kenyon Review offers an extraordinary opportunity to writers who have embarked on promising careers: a two-year fellowship devoted to creative and professional development within Kenyon’s vibrant literary community. This two-year postgraduate position is intended for creative writers who have already completed the MFA or PhD degree and are seeking time to develop as writers, teachers, and editors. The fellowship begins in August 2018. Applications will be accepted from August 15 through September 15, 2017. Learn more about applying for a fellowship.

Young Writers: the South Bronx Connection

The KR Young Writers Workshop—immersive, exhausting, relentlessly exhilarating—can give high school students a powerful taste of new possibilities. That has been especially true for students from the South Bronx in New York City who have been participating in the summer program since 2010, with the help of full scholarships and a KR partnership with the Hunts Point Alliance for children. Read the rest of this article.

Why We Chose It

BY DAVID LYNN, EDITOR

“Door to Door” by Kevin Wilson appears in the July/Aug 2017 issue of the Kenyon Review.

Many of the sentences in “Door to Door,” a story by Kevin Wilson in the July/Aug 2017 issue of KR, seem to explode with wit and surprise. So much so that often the very next sentence—delightful in its own right—is astonishing just by successfully following, by being necessary to, the one before. Read the rest of “Why We Chose It.”

“Innumerable Kenyons”: A Resident Advisor for Young Writers Reflects on Time Passing

BY LIAM HORSMAN ’17, YOUNG WRITERS RESIDENT ADVISOR

Up by the observatory the other night, we heard an owl. Dusk had fallen, and we were beginning to gather the students to return to campus when one of the other RAs first noticed it. We leaned against the pasture fence and listened, watching fireflies thrown into relief against the darkening woods. The owl never made itself visible, and we could hardly hear it over the nearby kids singing “Fireflies” by Owl City. Nevertheless, we lingered there without speaking for several minutes, anticipating each subsequent call. Read the rest of this essay.

New in KR Podcasts

In this episode, Val Brelinski, author of The Girl Who Slept with God, talks with Zoë Kontes about naming her characters, “cooking with gas” with Tobias Wolff, and her best editor—surprisingly, her son. Listen to it!

From KROnline: Arthur or Night on Earth

BY MAXIM MATUSEVICH

By far, by far he was the most dazzling, the most charismatic man of the cohort. Just a couple of years older than the rest of us, Arthur comported himself with suave dignity. He was tall, lanky, mischievous-looking, with broad, fashionably stooped shoulders. A slight overbite rendered his mouth a perpetual sensual pout. He spoke slowly, deliberately, in a deep baritone (“what a beautiful velvety voice,” my grandma would note each time he called me at home), which presented a strange and alluring contrast to his youthful looks. Read the rest of this story

From the KR Blog: Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, Elle Magnuson interviews Joy Harjo

BY ELLE MAGNUSON

July 20, 2017

Books generally emerge from something forming, like clouds gathering for a storm, or how a crowd gathers, or a notion builds and carries through a community. An idea is not always a stable event. It might just be a seed. Read the interview.

A Micro-Conversation with Alix Ohlin

Alix Ohlin’s story, “Risk Management,” appears in the July/August 2017 issue of the Kenyon Review.

What was your original impetus for writing “Risk Management”?

There are three men who are always at my gym—close buddies who spend as much time talking as they do exercising. I love listening to them. One afternoon, one of them showed up late and apologized, saying he was at a risk management meeting. His friend said, “Who’s at risk?” The first guy shook his head and said, “Everyone’s at risk.” I thought, that is so true, and vowed to write a story with that line in it. Read the rest of the interview.

AUGUST 2017
CONTENTS
KR Fellowships
YW-Hunts Point
Why We Chose It
Young Writers Recap
KR Podcast
From KROnline
From the Blog
KR Conversations

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