October 2019

A Legacy of Transformation: David Lynn and the Kenyon Review

David Lynn is fond of saying that we live in a golden age of letters, with more diverse voices and more superb literature, finding audiences through more outlets than ever before. As Lynn prepares to retire as the longest-serving editor of the Kenyon Review, admirers point out that much the same could be said of the Review itself. Over twenty-six years, Lynn has transformed a print journal with an august history but shaky finances into a thriving, multifaceted literary-arts organization. Writers and editors, KR colleagues and board members, and former students have described Lynn as a meticulous, open-minded, and encouraging editor; a caring mentor; a boss who treats his staff like family; a big-picture thinker, unafraid of mounting ambitious initiatives and giving colleagues the freedom to shape them; and a fiercely loyal friend. Read about Lynn’s career and the changes he brought to KR.

“Knox Reads!” Features T.C. Boyle, Ushering in Literary Festival

The “Knox Reads!” book giveaway and discussion series this year center on The Relive Box, the acclaimed story collection by T.C. Boyle. Readers can pick up free copies of the book at three different locations on October 5, then join in conversations about the book later in the month. It’s all a prelude to the Kenyon Review Literary Festival, which will run on the Kenyon College campus from November 4 to 8, culminating in a lecture by Boyle, the winner of the 2019 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. The festival will include workshops, readings, and panel discussions. Dive into the book! Join the celebration! Check our website for more information about both Knox Reads! and the Literary Festival.

Why We Chose It

BY MAGGIE SMITH, EDITOR AT LARGE

“Bottle Fly” by Grady Chambers, appears in the Sept/Oct 2019 issue of Kenyon Review Online.

The opening of Grady Chambers’s “Bottle Fly” is a command not only to the poem’s speaker but also to the reader: “Pay attention.” And of course this is what poems require of us. We “pay” attention in that when we spend our time and mental energy, we are saying that what we notice, what we think about, is worth it. “Bottle Fly” . . . has a setting, characters, dialogue, and conflict, but the poem is lyric—and interior—at its core. There is the woman thinking aloud, and there is the speaker, listening and watching along with us—yes, paying attention. Read the rest of Why We Chose It.

Coming Soon: Poetry Contest for Young Writers

The seventeenth annual Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers—open to high school sophomores and juniors throughout the world—will begin accepting entries in November. The winner receives a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and the winning poem will be published in the Review, along with the poems of the two runners-up. Submissions are accepted electronically through November 30. Learn more about the contest.

Yes, Summer! Workshop Applications Open November 1

No, it is decidedly NOT too early to begin thinking about the summer of 2020—specifically, about treating yourself to the energizing experience of a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. We offer workshops in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and more. Apply online, starting November 1. To learn more about the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, click here.

New in KR Podcasts

Emily Jungmin Yoon and Eloisa Amezcua talk about failures as openings to possibilities, the poet’s work of filling in history’s gaps, and Emily’s poetry collection A Cruelty Special to Our Species. Listen to it!

KR at Translators Conference

“Words are not simply containers for meaning.” That’s one of the premises underlying this year’s conference of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), to be held November 7-10 in Rochester, New York. The theme is “Sight and Sound,” and discussions will involve the way translators “cannot separate the sense of words from their musicality” or from other factors like words’ visual appearance and cultural and historical contexts. The KR summer workshop in literary translation is one of the sponsoring partners for the conference, and KR will be represented by Katherine M. Hedeen and Elizabeth Lowe, the workshop instructors. For more information about their workshop click here. For information about the ALTA conference, click here.

From the KR Blog: “What Makes a Character Human”

BY AATIF RASHID

September 16, 2019

It’s been almost twenty years ago now since James Wood penned . . . his famous critique of a genre of literary novels he termed “hysterical realism,” specifically those big, complex, ambitious novels by writers like Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith . . ., novels which Wood argues are written in style that’s too madcap, wild, and unhinged, novels which “flourish their glamorous congestion” and novels in which “the conventions of realism” are ultimately “exhausted and overworked.” . . . [H]is central argument is essentially that these novels, because of their “hysterical” (his word) literary style, ultimately lead to fundamentally unrealistic and inhuman characters. Read the entire essay, in which Rashid takes issue with Wood’s critique.

New Micro-Reviews: Poetry in Translation

September was National Translation Month, and to mark the occasion KR has posted a new set of micro-reviews focusing on poetry in translation. Of special note: a review of Materia prima, the first English-language collection of work by the Uruguayan poet Amanda Berenguer. The bilingual edition draws on eight different books and features eight different translator-poets. You’ll also find reviews of two essay collections. Check out these latest micro-reviews.

OCTOBER 2019
CONTENTS
A Tribute to David Lynn
Knox Reads!
Why We Chose It
Grodd Contest
Summer Workshops
KR Podcasts
ALTA Conference
From the Blog
Micro-Reviews

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