February 2021

Why We Chose It

BY MISHA RAI, KENYON REVIEW FELLOW

“Man Goes to Check” by Libby Flores, appears in the Jan/Feb 2021 issue of KROnline.

In response to a question asked by an audience member on what she looks for in fiction, at the Kenyon Review’s recent Meet the Editor event, our new editor Nicole Terez Dutton said, “I love a story that is actually a journey where I arrive somewhere new.” An exemplar of that very idea put into practice is Libby Flores’s “Man Goes to Check.” The literal putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other journey, within the story, is the simple length a man must walk from his bedroom to the kitchen downstairs. Except, as this exquisitely layered tale reveals, there is nothing simple about this walk. Read the rest of Why We Chose It.

Daniel Zhang Wins Grodd Prize

Congratulations to Daniel Zhang, the winner of this year’s Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers. An eleventh grader from Edison, New Jersey, who attends Phillips Exeter Academy, Zhang won for his poem “Golden.” Praising the poem for its striking imagery, its “small details and grit,” our judge, Emily Nason, wrote: “This poem encapsulates so much of what it means to be a human: the daily heartbreak, violence, and thirst for acceptance we all experience.” Nason selected the winning poem from more than 1,300 submissions by young writers in forty-six states and forty countries outside the United States. As the winner, Zhang will receive a full scholarship to attend the Young Writers Workshop, and “Golden” will be published in the Sept/Oct 2021 issue of the Kenyon Review, along with poems by the two runners-up, Blair Enright of Weston, Massachusetts, and Gaia Rajan of Mason, Ohio. An honorable mention went to Yong-Yu Huang of George Town, Malaysia. Learn about the Grodd Prize winners and read the winning poem.

A Winter Evening of Poetry, Conversation, and Song

Think of it as a warm gathering in a cold season. Three extraordinary poets will share their work next week at a virtual reading that will also include music and give-and-take with the audience. The Zoom-based event, to be held on Tuesday, February 9, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, features Shira Erlichman, the author of Odes to Lithium; Ross Gay, the author most recently of The Book of Delights (essays) and the book-lengh poem Be Holding, along with three other collections; and Saeed Jones, author of the collection Prelude to Bruise and the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives. A musician, Erlichman will also perform as part of her reading. In informal conversation, the writers will take up some of themes that KR and the Kenyon community have explored as part of the pandemic-year project, In My Time: A Narrative Space. (See the story below.) Click here to learn more and to register for the event.

Fiction Contest Deadline Extended

There’s still time to enter our short fiction contest! We’ve extended the submissions deadline to February 15. We’re excited to announce that the judge for this year’s contest is ZZ Packer, the author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Contest entries must be no longer than 1,200 words. The winner will receive a scholarship to attend the 2021 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and the winning story will be published in the Jan/Feb 2022 issue of KR. Click here for more information and guidelines.

Writers Workshops: Time to Apply!

We recently began accepting applications for our 2021 summer workshops, and we’re excited about the enthusiasm we’re seeing. If you’re interested, we encourage you to apply early, as we use a rolling admissions process and workshops can fill quickly. This year, all sessions will be online, with an array of options for enriching the workshop experience. The lineup:

June 20-26: Fiction, literary nonfiction, poetry, and spiritual writing.
July 11-17: Fiction, literary nonfiction, poetry, and writers workshop for teachers.
July 11-23: Literary translation.

For complete information on the workshops, instructors, and application process, click here.

In My Time: A Narrative Space

“My twin brother, Danny, could say twelve words.”
“I was in my midtwenties and studying in an MFA program when my mind began to slip.”
“That was the summer we damned only the earth.”
Here are the powerful opening lines of the three pieces in the latest collection of readings for In My Time: A Narrative Space, a literary project engaging the KR/Kenyon communities in the deep challenges of our shared pandemic year. This third collection, with an introduction by KR Fellow in Poetry Molly McCully Brown, deals with disability and trauma. Brian Trapp writes about his severely disabled twin brother in the funny and heartbreaking essay “Twelve Words.” Sejal A. Shah delves into her experience with manic depressive illness in “Even If You Can’t See It: Invisible Disability and Neurodiversity.” In Ilya Kaminsky’s poem “That Map of Bone and Opened Valves,” deafness heightens the terror of war. Click here to read these pieces—all originally published in the Kenyon Review or KROnline—and to learn more about the project, including supplementary resources along with writing activities and virtual public events.

Young Writers: Deadline Approaching

Attention, high school writers: the application deadline for our popular Young Writers summer program is March 1. The workshop experience will be different this year: we’re offering week-long sessions, online, with each session taking inspiration from a possibility-filled theme. Because the themes are different, students may apply for more than one week. The themes: Words and Wonders, Writing Across Worlds, and Observation Meets Imagination (devoted to science and nature writing). In every session, students will explore a variety of genres, from poetry, to fiction, to hybrid forms. Here is the 2021 schedule:

June 13-18: Words and Wonders
June 27-July 2: Observation Meets Imagination; Words and Wonders
July 12-17: Writing Across Worlds
July 26-31: Writing Across Worlds

Click here for more information about the workshops and to learn how to apply.

From the KR Blog: “Poetry Today: Kazim Ali and Tommye Blount”

BY RUBEN QUESADA

January 12, 2021

A master of multiple genres, Kazim Ali describes his most recent book of poetry, The Voice of Sheila Chandra, as a “choral” work. “While I was working on the polyvocal poem ‘Hesperine for David Berger,’ I was listening to the drones of Sheila Chandra to help me find the multiplicity of patterns and tones inside single instants and singular milieux.” Poet Tommy Blount, reflecting on his recent collection Fanasia for the Man in Blue (a finalist for the National Book Award), notes themes of “race, desire, sexuality, and queerness,” adding that he hopes “readers will leave with questions about their own notions of beauty.” Read the complete blog post, which includes these writers’ thoughts on books that have been important to them, their own writing, and poetry’s potential.

Looking for a Good Book?

If you regularly explore the Kenyon Review website, you know that we publish new online book reviews every Friday. Our KR Reviews section provides another way to discover the best in contemporary fiction, poetry, and literary translation. Recent postings range from a review of Bess Winter’s debut story collection, Machines of Another Era (Gold Wake Press, 2021), by Joe Sacksteder, to Nathaniel Rosenthalis’s review of Runaway (Ecco, 2020), the fifteenth collection by the acclaimed poet Jorie Graham. Check out KR Reviews.

In Case You Missed It…

“There’s so much work for the imagination to do.” That’s one way to see the role of the Kenyon Review, according to KR’s new editor, Nicole Terez Dutton. On January 12, Kenyon College and KR hosted an online event to introduce Dutton, who started work last July. The event featured a conversation between Dutton and poet Carl Phillips, readings by the KR Fellows Misha Rai and Molly McCully Brown as well as Kenyon student Tariq Thompson, and even the debut of a celebratory cocktail (“The Associate Always Reads Twice”) and mocktail (“The Copy Editor”). If you missed this event, you can watch the recording. Click here!

FEBRUARY 2021 
CONTENTS
Why We Chose It
Grodd Poetry Contest
Reading Series
Short Fiction Contest
Writers Workshops
In My Time
Young Writers
From the Blog
KR Reviews
New Editor Video

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