October 2021

A Force for Literature: David Lynn Receives KR Achievement Award

In bestowing its highest award this year, the Kenyon Review looks—with gratitude and pride—to one of its own. The 2021 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement honors KR Editor Emeritus David H. Lynn, a gifted writer and extraordinary editor who has long been a vital force for American letters—largely through the journal he led from 1994 to 2020. Lynn, the longest-serving editor of KR, will receive the award on November 9 at a gala dinner at the restaurant Daniel in New York City. Learn more about Lynn, the achievement award, and the gala, which raises funds for Young Writers scholarships.

Tune in to KR Reading Series

Our Fall Reading Series continues with two virtual events this month—including one TOMORROW—and more coming up in November and December. Register via Zoom for:

Wednesday, October 13: poet Marianne Chan, fiction writer Gabriel Bump, and creative nonfiction writer Nina Boutsikaris, the winners of the 2021 New Writers Award of the Great Lakes Colleges Association. (Judges for the awards included Kenyon College faculty members and KR consulting editors Keija Parssinen and Ira Sukrungruang.)

Thursday, October 21: essayist and memoirist Jill Christman, and poet Mark Neely.

And mark your calendars now for:

November 4: Amy Butcher and Ira Sukrungruang.

November 17: KR Deputy Editor Elliott Holt talks with Marcela Fuentes, Bennett Sims, and Hananah Zaheer, all of whom have fiction in the fall issues of KR.

December 7: KR Editor Nicole Terez Dutton talks with Linda Gregerson, Richie Hofmann, and Rajiv Mohabir, who all have poetry in the fall issues of KR.

To learn more about these writers and to register for these Zoom-based events, see the Reading Series page on our website..

Coming Soon: Contest for High School Poets

At KR, we love November because it brings an influx of amazing poems as submissions arrive for the Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers. We’ll accept submissions from November 1 through 30 for the contest, which is open to high school sophomores and juniors worldwide. The winner receives a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and the winning poem will be published in KR, together with the poems of the runners-up. This year’s judge is the acclaimed poet and essayist Molly McCully Brown, a former Kenyon Review fellow and now a contributing editor—and a previous winner of the Grodd Prize. Entries for the Grodd Prize must be submitted electronically. Learn more about the contest.

A Peek at 2022

The coming year promises to be an exciting one for the Kenyon Review, as most of our issues will include portfolios of work on compelling themes. Some of these special sections will be guest-edited by noted writers. The May/June issue, for example, will feature pieces by “Angry Mamas” discussing the climate crisis and environmental justice, edited by Emily Raboteau, author of The Professor’s Daughter and Searching for Zion, winner of the American Book Award. For Nov/Dec, we’ll have a fiction portfolio devoted to the idea of “bridges.” The co-editors: Laura van den Berg, whose books include The Third Hotel and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears; and Paul Yoon, the author of Snow Hunters, Run Me to Earth, and other books. Keep an eye on the newsletter for other themes to be featured in KR next year.

Bottle the Magic: Extending the Workshop Experience

Every summer, we’re astonished all over again by how KR’s writing workshops energize the participants, who see their own writing soar, in part because of the close bonds they forge with their fellow writers and the workshop instructors. We’ve always wondered: how can we bottle this magic—individual creativity nurtured by community—and keep it working? Interestingly enough, the pandemic constraints of 2021 led us to one answer, and to plans for expanding and enriching the workshop experience in 2022. Read about our reunion open mics and other ways that Writers Workshop and Young Writers participants are sustaining the communities they discovered through KR.

OCTOBER 2021 
CONTENTS
Award Recipient
Reading Series
Grodd Prize
A Peek at 2022
Writing Workshops

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