August 2020

Submissions Period Coming:
September 15-October 1

The Kenyon Review will begin accepting submissions online on September 15, 2020, and the submission period will continue through October 1. All submissions are considered for publication in either the print magazine or KROnline. As always, we welcome short fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and translation. We are especially eager to discover and publish work by new voices from traditionally underserved communities. Click here to learn about our submission guidelines.

Why We Chose It

BY MISHA RAI, KENYON REVIEW FELLOW

“When They Came for Us,” by Samia Ahmed, appears in the July/Aug 2020 issue of the Kenyon Review.

Samia Ahmed’s incisive story “When They Came for Us” accomplishes a rare feat: in a tightly told tale redolent with dread and inevitable disaster, resistance and hope rear their twinned heads again and again. Aafreen, the protagonist and narrator, takes the reader on a harrowing journey she is forced to make by “men (who) looked like burned-out candle wicks” to a detention center. Such is the exquisite control exercised over narrative time by Ahmed, that in the duration it takes for Aafreen to be ripped from her mother, shoved into an overcrowded bus that is “in a slum-like squalor” and find herself “outside the detention center,” context for these events, the people of her past and those she is on the bus with, are clearly and achingly rendered. Read the rest of “Why We Chose It.”

On Books and Their Harbors

Memoirist Alia Volz and poet Philip Metres are the latest contributors to our new online project, On Books and Their Harbors. Inspired by the recognition that the coronavirus pandemic has prevented authors with new books from fully connecting with readers, the project offers reflections by writers on their recently published work as well as on the bookstores and communities that have helped sustain their careers. The series includes links where readers can learn more about the authors’ favorite bookstores and where they can buy the authors’ new books.

Volz, the author of the memoir Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), writes about how a tiny bookstore and an outdoor “trunk signing” helped salvage lost opportunities for her book launch. Metres, whose latest poetry collection is Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), sees bookstores and libraries as “places of refuge”; his essay honors three booksellers and a librarian in Ohio, Kansas, Beirut, and Gaza. Click here to read their essays along with earlier essays in the project, and to learn more about On Books and Their Harbors.

Innovating around COVID: KR’s 2020 Virtual Programming

Words, which bring our Kenyon Review community together, happily transcend space. So when the pandemic prevented us from offering residential writing workshops this summer, we gathered readers and writers online—improvising, innovating, discovering new possibilities for our programs. Click here for a recap of the creative programs we devised.

New in KR Podcasts

Fiction Editor Kirsten Reach talks with Nadia Reiman ’05 about producing “The Out Crowd,” the episode of This American Life that was awarded the very first Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting; her latest reporting on immigration; her time at Kenyon working for WKCO; and how she “baby bird-ed” an indie rock radio show in Costa Rica. Listen to it!

From the KR Blog: “On Not Giving Up”

BY LAURA MAYLENE WALTER

July 13, 2020

Years ago, I came to terms with the fact that I’m going to keep writing even if I never publish again. As difficult as writing is—and let’s be honest, it can be a breeding ground for loneliness, self-doubt, and self-loathing; it’s rife with rejection; it’s tough on both the spine and the heart; and there’s pitifully little money in it, and often just as little respect—I’m going to keep doing it as long as I’m able. Read the entire blog post.

AUGUST 2020
CONTENTS

Submissions Open Soon
Why We Chose It
On Books & Their Harbors
COVID Response
KR Podcasts
From the Blog

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