July 2020

On Books and Their Harbors: A New Project from the KR Fellows

There’s nothing quite like the exhilaration of bringing a new book into the world. But the pandemic, in canceling tours, readings, and signings, in shuttering bookstores or restricting their hours and activities, has fractured this moment when creation becomes connection. It’s a blow to every writer with a new book, to readers, to independent bookstores—and to the culture, which needs literature more than ever. In response to this challenge, the Kenyon Review Fellows, Misha Rai and Molly McCully Brown, have created an online series, On Books and Their Harbors, in which writers reflect on their new books as well as on the communities and spaces that they have found vital.

The project has a home on the KR website, here. The essays that Rai and Brown have solicited will introduce readers to extraordinary writers and their work, while also exploring the sustaining relationships that have helped them connect with audiences. At the very least, it’s a way of supporting both authors and their local booksellers. In that spirit, On Books and Their Harbors will provide links where readers can learn more about the authors and the authors’ favorite bookstores—and where they can buy the authors’ new books.

The project opens with an introduction by the fellows and with two essays: “A Prickly Stapled Spine,” in which Souvankham Thammavongsa revisits the very beginnings of her career and thanks a bookseller for “seeing me as I am before I ever was”; and “A Zoom of One’s Own,” in which Francisco Aragón celebrates online gatherings, homemade signed bookplates, and other ways in which the literary community has made a “pandemic pivot.” Discover this exciting new project!

Why We Chose It

BY SERGEI LOBANOV-ROSTOVSKY, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

“Listening in Common in Uncommon Times,” by Ella Finer, appears in the May/June 2020 issue of KROnline.

Are we flying with the planet or against it? As hard as it may be to remember how it feels to take a flight in these strange, earthbound times, it’s impossible not to feel the resonance of the opening line of Ella Finer’s powerful essay, “Listening in Common in Uncommon Times.” We’re carried along by forces greater than us, but so often it feels like we’re flying against the planet, simultaneously caught in a moment of timelessness and rushing into a future that we can’t imagine or anticipate. Read the rest of “Why We Chose It.”

On the Page: July/Aug Issue of KR

The new issue of the Kenyon Review features “Temporary and Ongoing,” a special fiction section guest-edited by the novelist, editor, and teacher Angie Cruz. Each of the five stories (plus one in KROnline) is “told from the point of view of someone who has been displaced, silenced, or made to feel invisible,” writes Cruz, the author of three novels, most recently Dominicana (Flatiron, 2019). “They are all also characters who, despite the challenges and circumstances they face, resist, fight, and dream.” The July/Aug issue also includes essays by Nicola Dixon and Floyd Collins, along with poems by Stanley Plumly, Dan Beachy-Quick, Grace Schulman, Rodney Jones, and others. Subscribe or order a print or digital copy today!

For the Ear: KR Out Loud

Rest your eyes, pamper your ears. Most of the pieces in the July/Aug Kenyon Review are available in audio form—in most cases, read by the authors—on KR Out Loud. Think of it as another form of nourishment (sensory, soulful) during a time of deprivation. Have a listen.

Virtual Readings Continue Tonight

Since late last month, we’ve presented “In a Few Words,” a Zoom-based series of readings and discussions bringing together instructors from the KR Writers Workshops and their Peter Taylor Fellows. The series culminates tonight at 7:30 p.m. EDT, with five pairs of writers plus an introduction by our new editor, Nicole Terez Dutton. If you can’t make it tonight, you can watch this and all of the readings at your leisure, on our YouTube channel. Click here to learn more and to join the gathering.

New in KR Podcasts

Andrew Grace, KR’s associate poetry editor, talks with poet Ruth Awad about interviewing her father on his immigration experience, poetry as a historical document, and finding language for our interior worlds. Listen to it!

From the KR Blog: “Moving”

BY NATALIE BERGER

June 10, 2020

I’m quarantined in a house on the Oregon coast, listening to my parents argue about the washing machine. The house shakes every time it’s on a spin cycle. The town is the size of a teaspoon. My four years of college will come to a close on platforms called Moodle and Zoom—names a six-year-old would give to a dog. If I think about it too hard, a gavel thumps around in my head. I have to remind myself that I’m not on vacation. Read the rest of the essay.

JULY 2020
CONTENTS

On Books & Their Harbors
Why We Chose It
July/Aug 2020 Issue
Kenyon Review Out Loud
In a Few Words
KR Podcasts
From the Blog

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