February 2020

Why We Chose It

BY KIRSTEN REACH, FICTION EDITOR

“The Forgetting Diary” by Shoshana Akabas, appears in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of the Kenyon Review.

Shoshana Akabas structures her piercing story “The Forgetting Diary” around a note for the doctor, which her protagonist must keep after she is diagnosed with Lyme disease. The story takes the form of a list, in which each of the thirty-three sections begins with the words “I forget.” We’ve seen stories organized by lists in our submission pile before, but this one has more layers than a lasagna: warmth, tenderness, sarcasm, sorrow, and regret. Associate Editor Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky and I found it impossible to resist. Read the rest of Why We Chose It.

Manasi Garg Wins Young Poet’s Prize

Congratulations to Manasi Garg, a junior at Saratoga High School in Saratoga, California, who took first place in KR’s Patricia Grodd Poetry Contest for Young Writers. Garg’s winning poem, “Cutglass,” was selected from more than 1,200 submissions by young writers in forty-four states and twenty-seven countries outside the United States. Contest judge Molly McCully Brown, the current KR Fellow in Poetry, wrote that Garg’s poem “navigates its deeply complex subject matter with a remarkable combination of authority, tenderness, and restraint. I’ll be hearing the echo of its last phrase—We will take this new country and wear it like / a coat—for a long time.” The poem will be published in the Sept/Oct 2020 issue of the Kenyon Review, along with poems by the two runners-up. In addition, Garg will receive a full scholarship to attend the Young Writers Workshop this summer. Learn about the Grodd Prize runners-up and read the winning poem.

Grab Your Spot in a Writers Workshop

A number of our Writers Workshops for Summer 2020 are close to filling, but spaces still remain—and we encourage you to apply now if you’re tempted by the opportunity to spend a week on a beautiful college campus honing your art in the company of like-minded writers and superb instructors. Here’s the lineup:

June 21-27, 2020
Fiction: Angie Cruz, Caitlin Horrocks
Literary Nonfiction: Rebecca McClanahan, Dinty W. Moore
Poetry: Kimiko Hahn, Carl Phillips, Shara McCallum, Solmaz Sharif
Spiritual Writing: Kaveh Akbar, Jamie Quatro

July 12-18, 2020
Fiction: E.J Levy, Karin Lin-Greenberg, Ira Sukrungruang, Nick White, Nancy Zafris
Literary Nonfiction: Geeta Kothari
Poetry: David Baker, Dan Beachy-Quick, Natalie Shapero
Translation: Katherine M. Hedeen and Elizabeth Lowe
Writers Workshop for Teachers: Erick Gordon, Brad Richard
Read more about the workshops here.

Worlds Commingle in Young Science Writers Workshop

“Striving for creativity with facts, I’ve produced some of my best work.”
“I really appreciated the small, intimate workshop size.”
“The mix of reading, including fiction, research articles, poetry, and nonfiction was very valuable and inspired growth in my writing.”
“The growth of friendships through workshops was amazing.”
Students who love both science and creative writing have loved the KR Young Science Writers Workshop because, rather than separating these two realms, the program brings them together. Science and nature inspire some of the most powerful writing in the world today. This two-week workshop is full of discovery, inviting a deeper understanding of the physical universe and our human place in it. We’re now accepting applications for the Summer 2020 workshop, which runs from June 28 to July 11 and is open to students ages 16 to 18. Need-based financial aid is available. For more information, click here.

Join Us at AWP, March 4-7

In just a month, the 2020 conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs gets under way in San Antonio, Texas, and, as usual, the Kenyon Review will be well represented. You can find us at Booth #1655, where we’ll host book signings by Molly McCully Brown & Susannah Nevison, Adam Clay, and Caitlin Horrocks. We’re especially proud to sponsor a Tribute to David Baker, recognizing his more than twenty-five years as KR’s poetry editor and his contribution to the world of letters. In addition, KR editors, fellows, and workshop instructors will speak on a wide range of panels. Click here for a schedule of AWP events featuring KR people.

New in KR Podcasts

Brad Richard and Erick Gordon, seasoned writers, educators, and instructors in our Writers Workshop for Teachers, discuss indelible workshop memories and the way creative writing brings wonder to language and excitement to communication. Listen to it!
Also, author and KR workshop instructor Dinty Moore sits down with KR’s Elizabeth Dark to discuss creative nonfiction, the tackling of truth-telling, the evolution and significance of his work with the journal Brevity, and the tension between being productive and slowing down. Listen to it!

From the KR Blog: “Revision, Killer of Souls”

BY LAURA MAYLENE WALTER

January 20, 2020

I’d just finished co-presenting a workshop about the writing life when one of the attendees raised his hand. “You mentioned the importance of revision several times in this presentation,” he said. “Don’t you ever worry that revision will kill the soul of a piece?” The short answer my co-presenters and I offered was a simple “No.” A slightly longer answer might be something like: “No, no, no, most definitely no.” Read the entire blog post.

Out There: Alumni in the World

Cleveland, Ohio, native Aaron Berry Davis had never heard of Kenyon or the Kenyon Review when, as a high school student, he happened upon a copy of the journal at Half-Price Books. “I had just decided I liked reading and so I was trying to cultivate some sort of taste. It was wildly important for me to find literature that was being published out of the Midwest.” Fast forward: Davis attended Kenyon, found inspiring professors who pushed him intellectually, graduated in 2019—and has just published a story, “Mercy,” in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of the Kenyon Review. KR intern Erin Donnelly ’20 profiles Davis, who discusses how “Mercy” and other stories in his collection-in-progress are rooted in the struggles of Cleveland during the Great Recession and the opioid epidemic. Read the profile.

And This

Just to show that in our troubled world there are still moments of connection that come out of the blue and spark some joy, consider this tweet that turned up last month, mentioning a certain literary journal: “A sweet NYC moment. Riding the D train to work reading @theCCR’s annual report (as one does) when, just before stepping off the train, the man standing next to me hands me his copy of the @kenyonreview and says, I think you might like this. Indeed, my friend. Indeed. Ty!” The tweet was posted by Nadia Ben-Youssef, an attorney and writer who works as advocacy director at the Center for Constitutional Rights (hence the CCR), and it featured a photo of the Nov/Dec 2019 KR, a special issue devoted to literary activism. We tweeted our thanks to her, saying, “This makes our day,” to which she responded: “Me too—here’s to the storytellers and the advocates and the commuters who know that another world is possible!” Yes.

FEBRUARY 2020
CONTENTS

Why We Chose It
Grodd Poetry Prize
Writers Workshops
Young Science Writers
KR @ AWP
KR Podcasts
From the Blog
Associate Spotlight
Subway Exchange

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