November 2017

Kenyon Review Literary Festival,
Nov. 10-11, Features Colm Tóibín

Join us in Gambier, Ohio, on Friday-Saturday, Nov. 10-11, for this year’s Kenyon Review Literary Festival, a celebration of the best in contemporary writing. Highlights include a Friday-night reading by Nate Marshall, a joint reading on Saturday by Elissa Washuta and Nick White, the annual sidewalk sale of literary magazines and small-press books, and a screening of the film Brooklyn, based on the novel by Colm Tóibín. Tóibín, the widely acclaimed writer who won this year’s Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, will deliver the Denham Sutcliffe Memorial Lecture on Saturday night, and will sign books afterwards. Festival events are free and open to the public. Check out the complete schedule of events here.

Why We Chose It

BY GEETA KOTHARI, NONFICTION EDITOR

“How to Mourn” by Tyrese L. Coleman appears in the Nov/Dec 2017 issue of the Kenyon Review.

The narrator in Tyrese L. Coleman’s essay “How to Mourn” announces her problem immediately. “If you read my fiction, you will find a character named Grandma. In real life, she is dead. This is the story of her death. A story this writer, the main character—T—began drafting the moment she knew Grandma was not long for this earth. A story more like a performance—the sensation of watching yourself from outside your own body, when everything feels unreal, like living in a dream.” Most writers will recognize this moment when the need to narrate overrides the lived experience, so that the writer is performing life rather than living it. Read the rest of “Why We Chose It.”

Young Poets: Your Deadline Looms!

November 30 is the submission deadline for the Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers, open to high school sophomores and juniors around the world. The winner receives a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and the winning poem—as well as runner-up poems—will be published in the Nov/Dec 2018 issue of the Review. Find contest details here.

Applications Open in January for Summer Writers Workshops

Accomplished and aspiring writers alike have raved about the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, where they’re encouraged to stretch their abilities, generating fresh work under the guidance of superb instructors. In 2018, we’re again including nature writing in our lineup, along with workshops in fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, spiritual writing, and translation. Online applications open in January. Start planning now!

JUNE 16-23, 2018
Fiction, Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine, Caitlin Horrocks, Nancy Zafris
Literary Nonfiction, Geeta Kothari, Rebecca McClanahan
Poetry, Carl Phillips, Solmaz Sharif
Nature Writing, David Baker (poetry), A.J.Verdelle (prose)

JULY 7-12, 2018
Writers Workshop for Teachers, Erick Gordon, Brad Richard

JULY 7-14, 2018
Fiction, Lee K. Abbott, Angie Cruz
Hybrid, E.J. Levy
Nonfiction, Dinty W. Moore
Poetry, David Baker, Kimiko Hahn, Natalie Shapero
Spiritual Writing, Rodger Kamenetz, Afaa M. Weaver
Translation, Elizabeth Lowe and Katherine M. Hedeen

Learn more about the KR Writers Workshops, and apply online in January.

The Nov/Dec issue is out!

The new issue of the Kenyon Review is full of discoveries. Of particular note: “Cowboys & Aliens,” by Kevin Young, an excerpt from his forthcoming book about the great American tradition of the hoax. This issue also includes a striking group of decidedly contemporary sonnets by Pulitzer Prize finalist Diane Seuss, as well as a mesmerizing story by Anna Hartford in which astronomy provides a metaphorical lens through which a rocky love affair unfolds. Other authors in this issue include Vanessa Cuti and Lauren Schenkman (fiction), along with Bruce Smith, Analicia Sotelo, William Logan, and Monica Sok (poetry). Pick up the latest KR and dive in. Subscribe or order a print or digital copy today!

Resistance, Change, Survival: “All Who Would Have Seen Us Dead” by Alison Stine

I thought I could hide a bit in poetry—and I do. Readers don’t necessarily look for a narrative, or don’t always connect the dots. Essays have become increasingly harder for me to write. Though I make a living writing and reporting, op-eds and memoir fill me with fear. I can’t voice an opinion; opinions get you killed. I can’t tell my story; my story has a villain who thinks he is a hero. Read the rest of this essay, in which Stine explores how abuse by men splinters women’s stories—and lives—as she poses the question: “Why do women stay silent?” It’s part of a series initiated by the Kenyon Review Fellows.

New in KR Podcasts

Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz talks to Kenyon College Associate Professor of English Ivonne M. García about expressing his political views on Facebook, an emerging New America, the significance of ghosts and the Gothic, and the fukú, or the idea of being cursed. Listen to it!

From KROnline: “Loving Homes for Lost & Broken Men”

BY ALLEGRA HYDE

I took in my first foster husband when I was thirty-eight. I knew, by then, that I would never have a husband of my own, and I wanted to do some good in the world. Fostering these abandoned men was a way to give back. There are so many husbands lost in system—you don’t hear about them much, but they’re there—so many husbands looking for a forever home. I would be the one to help. Read the story.

From the KR Blog: An Interview with T Clutch Fleischmann

BY AYLA MAISEY

October 5, 2017

I love journals and read writers’ journals all the time. The journal is a really great form and in nonfiction, it gets discounted a bit; people think of it as a private thing—which is weird because we’re already dealing with personal essays and this relationship between the private and the public. I don’t really have a journaling practice that I distinguish from my writing practice. I try to write most every day and to write from a very immediate space; whatever enters into my life naturally is what ends up on the page. Read the interview.

A Micro-Conversation with Cintia Santana

Santana’s poem, “Hum,” appears along with another poem in the Sept/Oct 2017 issue of the Kenyon Review.

Can you talk a little bit about the musicality of your language [in “Hum”], and the subtle rhyme? It’s so hard to accomplish well—I especially admired “little red / vials / constantly / defiled; / starvation / staved / for one / more day.”

It’s possible I owe it to my poor hearing! I keep a list of mishearings that I find interesting. While I rarely use these in my writing, I think the habit is a bit like practicing scales for me. Spanish is my first language, and because I grew up bilingual, I’ve long been hyperaware of near sounds and near words; I’m fascinated by the ways in which one letter added to—or taken away from—a word can change its meaning, its sound, even the language to which it belongs. Read the entire interview.

New Micro-Reviews from KROnline

Nine poetry collections that reach expansively across cultures are featured in our latest batch of micro-reviews. Shauna Osborn deploys both Spanish and Comanche phrases in Arachnid Verve. Micronesian climate-change refugees figure in Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter. Joan Naviyuk Kane’s haunting fourth collection, Milk Black Carbon, evokes her endangered Inuit culture. And Tommy Pico’s book-length, fast-paced Nature Poem steeps itself in urban vernacular to spin the story of a young, queer American Indian poet who resists the whole idea of nature poetry. Read the latest micro-reviews.

NOVEMBER 2017
CONTENTS
Lit Fest is Here!
Why We Chose It
Grodd Poetry Prize
Writers Workshops
Nov/Dec 2017 Issue
Resistance, Change,
     Survival: Alison Stine
KR Podcast
From KROnline
From the Blog
KR Conversations
Micro-Reviews

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