September 2020

Submissions Period Opens September 15

Yes, it’s time to make those final revisions. Our submissions period opens on September 15 and runs through October 1. We use the online management system Submittable, and we consider all submissions for both the print magazine and KROnline. KR prides itself on publishing the best in contemporary fiction, poetry, essays, translations, and drama, and on discovering new voices, especially those from traditionally underserved communities. Click here to learn about our submission guidelines.

Sept/Oct KR: Powerful Voices

The Sept/Oct issue of the Kenyon Review features a special poetry section, “All of This Is True,” guest-edited by Reginald Dwayne Betts, whose own poetry, a memoir, and essays explore the world of prison and the effects of violence and incarceration on American society. Betts has selected powerful work by fifteen poets—poems “breaking me open and calming me down,” as he writes in his introduction. The new issue also includes the winning poem and two runners-up in the 2020 Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers, along with an introduction by contest judge and KR Fellow in Poetry Molly McCully Brown. Subscribe or order a print or digital copy today!

Kenyon Review Out Loud

As always, most of the writing in the new issue of KR is also available in audio form, through Kenyon Review Out Loud. In most cases, the poems and stories are read by their authors, providing another way to connect with extraordinary voices. Listen here.

Virtual Readings Return

Pivoting to Zoom-based public readings this past spring, we discovered that virtual has its virtues. So our Fall Reading Series, which begins this month, will remain online. We’re happy that technology enables our “visiting” writers to reach a wider audience, even as we recognize that health concerns sadly make in-person gatherings impossible for now. The series kicks off on September 15 at 7:00 p.m., via Zoom, with a reading by poet Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers (above), whose most recent collection is The Tilt Torn Away from the Seasons (Acre Books, 2020). Rogers is a KR consulting editor and a former KR fellow. The series continues on October 6, also at 7:00, with Rebecca McClanahan, whose newest book is In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays (Red Hen Press, 2020). A member of KR’s advisory board, McClanahan has long taught creative nonfiction in our summer writing workshops. Find more information on our reading series web page, which we’ll update regularly as we set dates for additional readings.

On Books and Their Harbors

Two recent contributors to our online project On Books and Their Harbors are the poet Christopher Kondrich and the memoirist/fiction writer Sejal Shah. Reflecting on his recent book Valuing (University of Georgia Press, 2019), Kondrich writes about “how a poetry collection is a constellation of the community spaces, events, and people that inspired its creation.” In his case, those spaces include Solid State Books in Washington, DC, and Counterpath, a publisher, exhibition space, and bookstore in Denver. Shah, author of the memoir-in-essays This Is One Way to Dance (University of Georgia Press, 2020), celebrates Writers & Books, a community literary arts center in Rochester, New York, and its bookstore, Ampersand Books. She sees Writers & Books as a formative literary home, where she discovered readings and workshops as a teenager and where she has returned as an adult. “It’s about writers and books: finding the other people who care as passionately about them as you do.”Click here to read their essays as well as other essays in this series—and to buy the writers’ books.

From the KR Blog: “‘Jane Austen and Ovid Meet COVID-19’: A Conversation with Heather Dubrow”

BY CAROLINE HAGOOD

August 13, 2020

Another conception is reflected in the title [of Dubrow’s new poetry collection] Lost and Found Departments. Poetry is of course so often about loss—someone observed, intriguingly if not always persuasively, that all lyric is really about loss, and I realized that I often wrote about loss and recovery, sometimes a reassuring line and sometimes a cycle or circle. A brief suggestion that I change the title to just Lost and Found didn’t seem right: I wanted of course to play on the offices in question but also to suggest that losing and finding occur in so many different ways. Read the rest of the conversation with poet and scholar Heather Dubrow.

KR and Translation: Conference, Summer Workshop

Once again, KR’s literary translation workshop will be one of the sponsors of the annual conference of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Conference, and our workshop instructors—Katherine M. Hedeen and Elizabeth Lowe—will lead sessions. The conference will be held, virtually, from September 30 to October 18. Hedeen will lead one or two workshops on poetry, while Lowe will moderate a panel titled “Translation Prizes: Ethical and Aesthetic Responsibilities of the Jury.” Click here for more information about the 2020 ALTA conference.

Meanwhile, practicing and aspiring literary translators should take note: We will in fact offer our Summer Translation Workshop in 2021, with Hedeen and Lowe teaching online. Keep an eye on the Writers Workshops website and on future issues of this newsletter for updated information.

KR Project Helps Kenyon Weather a Pandemic School Year

KR is launching a yearlong writing and reading project for the Kenyon College community, as a way of fostering connection through creativity during a fraught time. With the pandemic disrupting the academic year—some students will be on campus, others will study remotely; classes will be in-person, virtual, or a mix of both; campus life will be constrained by various necessary health protocols—we’re planning an array of literary activities to bring people together. This project, part of the campus-wide Learn, Unlearn, Relearn initiative, is open to all students, faculty, and staff, whether they’re working on campus or remotely. We will provide curated reading material from KR and KROnline, host online readings and discussions with the authors of the pieces, share writing prompts, conduct writing workshops, and organize public readings by writers from within the college community. By the end of the academic year, the project will produce an anthology of pieces written by members of the Kenyon community. As one of the most unusual academic years in history gets under way, we’ll share more information about the project and how to participate. Stay tuned!

The KR Podcast: A Hiatus

We’d like to thank you, listeners, for your continued support and engagement with our podcasts. For more than six years, we have endeavored to bring you enlightening and entertaining conversations with some of the brightest lights in literature. After a good deal of deliberation, the KR team has decided to take a short hiatus from our podcast offerings in an effort to better address these changed and changing times. It is our hope that the podcast will return in 2021 refreshed and revitalized. In the meantime, please stay in touch via this newsletter, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or, as our good friend Natalie Shapero once said, “Just float down the Kokosing and look up!” Click here to listen to one of our many archived podcasts.

SEPTEMBER 2020
CONTENTS

Submissions Open Soon
Sept/Oct 2020 Issue
Kenyon Review Out Loud
Reading Series
On Books & Their Harbors
From the Blog
Translation Workshop
Pandemic Project
Podcast Hiatus

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