Editor’s Notes

The Kenyon Review Fellowships (Redux)

One of the proudest legacies of The Kenyon Review was the awarding of fellowships to writers of great promise and significant early achievement. These grants, offered between 1952 and 1958 and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, nurtured the careers of authors such as Irving Howe, W. S. Merwin (honoree, you may recall, of the 2010 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement), Howard Nemerov, Flannery O’Connor, Ruth Stone, James Wright, and others of distinction. In a letter, O’Connor wrote: “At the time that I wanted to write stories and had stories to write, I felt free to write them, thanks to the fellowship.”