May 2014

Amy Blakemore Wins 2014 KR Short Fiction Contest

Amy Blakemore, of Ashland, Massachusetts, has won the seventh annual Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest. Blakemore’s story, “Previously, Sparrows,” was selected by judge Katharine Weber from more than 475 entries, and will be published in the Winter 2015 issue of The Kenyon Review. Blakemore will also receive a scholarship to attend the 2014 KR Writers Workshop.

Why We Chose It

By Anna Duke Reach, Director of Programs

What does 75 look like? This seemed an essential question as we searched for cover art to celebrate our dodranscentennial. The black-and-white photographs that have graced The Kenyon Review’s covers for the past twenty-five years offer a subtle, quiet elegance but lacked the bold, big-band, shout-out, parade-level energy of celebration. So began the search for firework-powered art to spark our covers in this anniversary year . . .

The Kenyon Review, Winter 1951, Vol. XIII, No. 1

The Formalist Critics

Here are some articles of faith I could subscribe to:

That literary criticism is a description and an evaluation of its object.

That the primary concern of criticism is with the problem of unity—the kind of whole which the literary work forms or fails to form, and the relation of the various parts to each other in building up this whole.

That the formal relations in a work of literature may include, but certainly not exceed, those of logic.

That in a successful work, form and content cannot be separated.

That form is meaning.

The Kenyon Review Credos: So Far

I’m not a big believer in inspiration, or at least in waiting around for it. Inspiration comes from the Latin (doesn’t Latin confer instant authority?): in + spirare, “to breathe into.” And isn’t it pretty to think so—that the muse will tilt your head back and pinch your nose and give you the kiss of life, breathe into you something necessary, fully formed, inalienable. But that notion does violence to the truth, because, before the being-breathed-into, comes work.

Click here to read Fennelly’s Credo.
KROnline is the online complement of The Kenyon Review. New fiction, essays, poetry, and reviews are published on a biweekly basis. Check back often to read some of the most cutting-edge material you’ll find anywhere on the web. Click here to see our latest offering.

Magical Mystery Tour: Science as the New Authority

March 15, 2014 — Amit Majmudar

A diagram of the Krebs Cycle, to the 99% of the human population untrained in Biochemistry, is as Mystifying today as a page of the Bible used to be to an illiterate European peasant. The Mystery and Miracle that used to be religion’s have shifted to the sciences, and with them, the Authority.

A Micro-Interview with Ayşe Papatya Bucak

Bucak’s story “An Ottoman’s Arabesque” appears in the Spring 2014 issue of The Kenyon Review.

Can you identify the seed of inspiration of your story “An Ottoman’s Arabesque”? What was the hardest part about writing it?

Like a lot of people I love lists, and so I love books of lists, in particular, the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die. One of the paintings in the book is L’Origine du Monde by Courbet, which rather insists on your attention. But what caught my writerly eye was the accompanying text, which said the painting was commissioned by the “wealthy Turkish patron, Khalil-Bey . . . a former diplomat and perhaps history’s most known collector of erotic art.” I had a feeling he was a story.

Contents May 2014
Short Fiction Contest
Why We Chose It
From the Archives
From KROnline
From the Blog
KR Conversations

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