December 2019

Your Holiday Reading List

Faithful reader, you know the drill. It’s December, time to ponder the passage of time and the solace of books. Too gloomy? OK: time to savor the sparkle of the season through the joys of reading. Whatever your mood as the calendar adds another year, we at KR celebrate by asking our editors and staff to suggest some of their favorite (especially recent) books, so that you can keep the pages turning and the pixels scintillating. Click here to see this year’s holiday reading recommendations.

“Like Spells and Incantations”: the KR Short Nonfiction Contest

“The essay is an artform, the short essay even more so,” writes Ira Sukrungruang. The author of three nonfiction books (as well as a story and a poetry collection), Sukrungruang will serve as judge for KR’s second annual short nonfiction contest, in which entries must have no more than 1,200 words. The contest submission period opened on December 1 and runs through December 31. Sukrungruang, who is also the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon, loves the way that the writers of short essays can use brevity as “a canvas of expansion,” creating “a world, a universe, a complexity of the human experience.” Good short essays, he writes, are like “spells and incantations that move us from a place of knowing to uncertainty.” Click here for more information about the contest.

Writers Workshops: Spotlight on Teachers

As we continue to accept applications for our Summer 2020 Writers Workshops, we’d like to call special attention to the workshop for high school teachers. Running from July 12 to 16, 2020, this workshop combines the generative approach of our other workshops (you write intensively, every day) with a focus on classroom practices designed to help students write creatively and interpret complex texts. Think of it as a five-day hybrid experience, part writers’ retreat, part professional development. For more information, click here.
And don’t forget our workshops in fiction, literary nonfiction, poetry, spiritual writing, and translation. Click here to learn about these Writers Workshops, running in two sessions, June 21-27 and July 12-18. Apply early to take advantage of our rolling admissions policy.

New in KR Podcasts

One again we’ve got two new podcasts for you to enjoy. KR’s Elizabeth Dark talks with author and historian Lauren Winner about spiritual writing, Image Journal, and Lauren’s fascination with objects, practices, and disciplines. Listen to it!

From the KR Blog: “Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry”

BY DAVE LUCAS

November 19, 2019

This is where, as ever, poetry comes in—between the need to name and the question of what to say. When we flail at saying what something is, metaphor allows us to say what it is like. When mere description fails, a poem can enact the work of art metaphorically. We may “see” the statue in Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” but the poem creates the sense of being seen. The sense that in the same glance we see what is and even what is not there. Read the entire essay.

On Screen: KR Videos

If you can’t make it to our readings, panel discussions, and lectures, you can always catch up via video, on the KR website and our YouTube channel. Recent postings include the campus reading by T.C. Boyle, winner of the 2019 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. As part of the Denham Sutcliffe Memorial Lecture, culminating the KR Literary Festival in November, Boyle read two stories, spoke about their genesis, and answered questions. Click here for our video site, which includes a link to the YouTube channel.

For the Holidays: Save on Subscriptions

Give a gift of literature this holiday season. We’re offering annual subscriptions to the Kenyon Review at the special rate of $25—or $30 if you add digital access. That’s 60 percent off the newsstand price. It’s a gift that will feed the mind and imagination throughout the year, with six issues offering the best in contemporary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. To take advantage of this special offer, click here.

DECEMBER 2019
CONTENTS

Holiday Reading Recs
Short Nonfiction Contest
Summer Workshops
KR Podcasts
From the Blog
KR Videos
Subscription Offer

^ BACK TO THE TOP