July 2019

David Lynn to Retire as KR Editor

Kenyon Review Editor David H. Lynn plans to retire in the coming year, after guiding the journal for more than twenty-five years and overseeing KR’s growth into a multifaceted cultural organization centered on the magazine but also embracing online offerings, workshops, readings, contests, awards, and an annual literary festival. We’ll do justice to David and the “Lynn Era” with a major story this fall. For now, we’ll reassure readers, writers, and friends that Lynn will remain at Kenyon College in a still-to-be-defined role, note that his retirement will affect our fall submissions period (see story below), and call attention to the July/Aug issue of the magazine, where in the Editor’s Notes Lynn begins a series of reflections on his tenure and the literary scene.

Why We Chose It

BY GEETA KOTHARI, NONFICTION EDITOR

“In the Presence of God I Make This Vow,” by Hasanthika Sirisena, appears in the May/June 2019 issue of the KROnline.

Hasanthika Sirisena’s essay is a compelling mix of history and personal inquiry. Sirisena’s gift lies in her ability to examine her subject from different angles, each section shedding new light as the reader advances through the piece. The overall effect is subtle, surprising, and in the end, completely satisfying even though Sirisena can’t answer the question that launches the essay.
Read the rest of “Why We Chose It.”

Now Out: the July/Aug Issue

The migrants are all court poets now. At night / they labor to translate / their traumas into EU legalese. The new issue of the Kenyon Review includes five powerful poems about refugees in the Mediterranean, by the prominent Libyan-American writer and translator Khaled Mattawa. You’ll also find poems by Zaina Alsous, Guy Goffette, and Shelley Wong, stories by Ariel Delgado Dixon, Kate Berson, and Aruni Kashyap, nonfiction by Andrea J. Buchanan and Floyd Collins, and more. Subscribe or order a print or digital copy today!

Now Playing: KR Out Loud

Let your ears do the reading. With each issue of the journal, we also produce aural versions of most of the published pieces via “KR Out Loud,” with the authors themselves reading their own work in most cases—an added layer of intimacy. Click here for the latest out-loud readings.

Early Alert: A (One-Time) Shorter Submissions Period

With David Lynn planning to retire (see story above), the KR editorial staff wants to be sure that his successor, upon arrival, has a chance to help shape the content of the next few issues of the magazine and KROnline—and doesn’t find them already full. As a result, we’ve decided to shorten our next submission period. The 2019 submissions period will run from September 15 to October 1. Yes, that’s a window of only a little more than two weeks. But it’s just this once, it’s for a good reason, and we’re giving you a heads-up now. So, as mom and dad always reminded you: plan ahead! Click here for more information about the 2019 submissions period.

New in KR Podcasts

KR Editor at Large Katharine Weber talks with author Sarah Weinman about her award-winning book on Nabokov’s Lolita, our fascination with crime, and our capability for misdeeds.
Listen to it!

From the KR Blog: “Amsterdam”

BY MARCIA BUTLER

June 4, 2019

For musicians, it begins alone in the practice room, toiling for incalculable hours perfecting technique, learning notes for upcoming concerts and fleshing out how the music will be rendered. But the alchemy occurs in rehearsal where a necessary sacrifice surfaces: your ideas are either torn to bits or incorporated. Musicians must tolerate both. Read the entire essay, which contrasts the essential comprises of the musician with the writer’s “power of one.”

Proof Casts a Shadow: Interrogating Otherness

Two intensely personal essays give voice to the experience of otherness—the newest contributions to “Proof Casts a Shadow,” the project created earlier this year by the KR fellows. In “In Water Disjointed from Me,” Lars Horn ponders “my body as something interior that radiates,” and asks: “What might gender look like if it’s written beyond the blurring of a male-female binary?” Phuong T. Vuong, in “Let Me Be Honest,” reflects on the insensitivity and stereotyping she encounters as an Asian American, writing: “The white man has only one thesis of me, that I care about racial ‘equality.’ This is his defense for always wanting to talk about ‘my plight.’” In addition, the poet and visual artist Xandria Phillips offers a new work, “interrupture.”
Check out the latest contributions to “Proof Casts a Shadow.”

Summer Snapshots

Smiling faces abound after a successful week of writing at the first session of Kenyon Review Writers Workshops 2019.

JULY 2019
CONTENTS
Lynn Retires
Why We Chose It
July/Aug 2019 Issue
Kenyon Review Out Loud
Submissions Period
KR Podcasts
From the Blog
Proof Casts a Shadow
Summer Snapshots

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