May 2021

Tiana Clark Reads Tonight!

Award-winning poet Tiana Clark reads tonight—May 4, at 7:00 p.m. EDT—as part of KR’s pandemic-year project, In My Time: A Narrative Space. Author of the collection I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, Clark was recently chosen as one of the two winners of the 2021-22 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, the latest of many prizes recognizing her work. Clark’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in publications ranging from the New Yorker and the Atlantic to Poetry Magazine and the Washington Post. Her poem “The First Black Bachelorette,” published in the Nov/Dec 2018 KR, is featured in the In My Time Project. Clark also shared thoughts about her work in a KR micro-conversation. The Zoom-based reading includes a question-and-answer session. Register here

Join the Conversation: Rosse Event Series

Excitement is building as KR nears the launch of the Rosse Event Series, an online program of twenty-two events including readings, panels, and conversations on literature and the craft of writing. Guest authors George Saunders and Daniel Torday take the virtual stage on June 20 to kick off the series, which will run in conjunction with the 2021 KR Writers Workshop sessions, June 20-26 and July 11-17. The audience will also hear from the eighteen Writers Workshop instructors as well the seventeen Peter Taylor Fellows, outstanding writers who serve as both participants and teaching assistants in the workshops. The $250 registration fee ($125 for students) includes admission to all Rosse Series Events in real time plus the option to view or revisit them through September 1. This rich opportunity for writers and readers is available for purchase now. Learn more here.

Pandemic Launches: A Panel of Kenyon Authors

The Kenyon Review is hosting five acclaimed authors—all graduates of Kenyon College—on Tuesday, May 18, at 7:00 p.m. EDT for a panel discussion titled Creative Projects During a Pandemic. The conversation, on writing and publishing over the past year, will be moderated by another Kenyon alum, Joumana Khatib ’13, a senior staff editor in the book section of the New York Times. The event, part of the college’s virtual alumni reunion, will include:

• Stephanie Danler ’06, the author of the memoir Stray and the novel Sweetbitter.
• Caitlin Horrocks ’02, the author most recently of the story collection Life Among the Terranauts and the novel The Vexations.
• Daniel Poppick ’07, author of the poetry collections Fear of Description and The Police.
• Harrison David Rivers ’04, a playwright and screenwriter, the author of the bandaged place, When Last We Flew, Where Storms Are Born, and other works.
• Daniel Torday ’00, author of the novels Boomer1 and The Last Flight of Poxl West.

Click here to learn more about this event and to register.

KR Introduces a New Mentoring Project

Next month, the Kenyon Review will accept applications for a program designed to nurture promising new voices in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by pairing writers with experienced editors for four months of one-on-one mentorship. The Developmental Editing Fellowship for Emerging Writers will enable writers to focus intensively on a project with the advice and guidance of an editor through regularly scheduled conversations and assignments. “I’ve found that we occasionally receive work that is noteworthy and compelling but not ready for publication,” said KR Editor Nicole Terez Dutton. “This fellowship will create space to support writers whose work is deeply important and promising,” with the goal of helping the writers finish their projects. Applicants must be twenty-one or older, not enrolled in or a graduate of a degree-granting program in creative writing, and not have published (or be under contract for) a book. Applications will be accepted between June 1 to 15. Writers from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the publishing industry are especially encouraged to apply.

Why We Chose It

BY SERGEI LOBANOV-ROSTOVSKY, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

“Sexy Motherfucker’s Mom” by Maureen Langloss, appears in the May/June 2021 issue of the Kenyon Review.

Let’s start with the obvious: titles are hard. Too many stories go out into the world wearing the names given them at birth, which stopped fitting comfortably somewhere around that awkward middle school yearbook photo, when all the real drama had just begun. So when, as an editor, you read a submission that grabs you immediately with its title, when everyone in the (virtual) office has to smile as they say it, when it fits the story like the sweet flute riff floating on top of a bass-heavy Prince song . . . I mean, how can you not love a story titled “Sexy Motherfucker’s Mom”? Read the rest of Why We Chose It.

Enjoy the May/June Issue

In her poem “Soup” Rita Dove evokes “that saturated glistering scent” and “the slow courage of the lentil” simmering in the pot, in the face of unsettling news from the doctor. Marianne Boruch contemplates nature’s degradation—“the shrinking bestiary,” “wind and dust and lost creatures”—in her poem “Some New-Century Pliny Bent Over a Map.” In his essay “Gilead,” Jonathan Gleason weaves together strands of intimacy and emotion, along with complex medical and economic constraints, as he recounts the unfolding of a gay relationship in a time when access to HIV-controlling PrEP therapy shadows the possibilities of love. These are among the many riches to be found in the May/June issue of the Kenyon Review, which has just been published. Dive in and enjoy! Subscribe or order a print or digital copy today!

Kenyon Review Out Loud

Don’t forget that with every new issue of KR, you can listen as well as read. In Kenyon Review Out Loud, the authors of the pieces in the issue read their work, offering the pleasure of voice beyond the words on the page. Listen here.

From the KR Blog: “The Myth of a Homeland: An Interview with K-Ming Chang”

BY MICHELLE LIN, KR INTERN

April 20, 2021

Many of the myths in Bestiary are ones that I’ve been in conversation with since I was young, or stories that I wanted to explore further (or that haunted me). The story of Hu Gu Po, the tiger spirit possessing a woman, was especially interesting to me because there is a lot embedded within the story about what it means to be a “good” woman or a “good” mother. I’m interested in the elemental nature of folktales and myths, and how they ultimately create the rules of our world. Tigers therefore became very important to the narrative because they allowed the characters to explore themes of hunger, desire, and violence in very direct and bodily ways. Click here to read the entire interview with K-Ming Chang, author of the novel Bestiary (One World/Random House, 2020).

MAY 2021 
CONTENTS
Tiana Clark to Read
Rosse Event Series

Reading Series
Fellowship Opportunity
Why We Chose It
May/June 2021
KR Out Loud
From the Blog

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