The Kenyon Review

The International Journal of Literature, Culture and the Arts

[thekenyonreview]

My New Year’s resolution is to give our Instagram feed more love and attention.

Are you following us there? instagram.com/kenyonreview/

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Judith Ortíz Cofer’s "Notes For My Daughter on the Morning of a New Year": bit.ly/2iOgj0G 

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This year's Kenyon Review Literary Festival (November 3-6) features a keynote address by two-time Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, readings by Kimberly Blaeser and Daniel Mark Epstein, and writing workshops with Epstein, Jaquira Diaz, and Margaree Little.

There will be family-friendly events including Empty Bowls, a dramatic reading of the play "Wolf Hall," a panel about reimagining the Renaissance, a sidewalk sale at the Kenyon College Bookstore, a chance for kids to make their own coats of arms, and even a visit by live falcons from the Ohio Wildlife Center. All events are free and open to the public. Join us!

For the full schedule: http://bit.ly/TySbMR

[thekenyonreview]

Morning visitor.

[electricliterature]

Kirsten Dunst to Make Directorial Debut with Adaptation of The Bell Jar

The “Fargo” Actress Has Enlisted Dakota Fanning as Esther Greenwood

“Of contemporary literary greats who’ve had their works (or lives) transposed for the big screen, Sylvia Plath has been comparatively unexplored.”

Read the full piece on Electric Literature.

[thekenyonreview]

Check out Sylvia Plath's "Colossus" from Autumn 1960: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4334071

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"I like surprises. Not in life, but on the page."

—Natalie Shapero

[thewritewire]

[thekenyonreview]

Happy 90th birthday, Allen Ginsberg!

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“Nothing harbors a secret like sweetness.”

-Matthew Olzmann’s “Letter to a Cockroach, Now Dead and Mixed Into a Bar of Chocolate”

bit.ly/23jnf66 

[thekenyonreview]

[Prince] says things like, “I like to say I live in the world, but I’m not of it,” and “I wanted my music, even now, to speak loudest for me.” On his musical inspirations, he says, “I learned a lot about space from Miles [Davis]. Space is a sound, too.” On the runaway success of the song “1999,” he explains, “I just wanted to write something that gave hope.” Perhaps writers can take some lessons from this interview. Space is a sound on the page, too. Stories or poems or books—even the bleakest ones—can provide hope. And many writers, I think, want their writing to speak loudest for them.

Laura Maylene Walter, http://bit.ly/1UQtaPN

[thekenyonreview]

Short Fiction Contest winner

You know what is exciting? Giving out awards.

Shout out to Eve Gleichman, who just won the 2016 Short Fiction Contest for her story “Butter.” Jaimy Gordon said it had “a certain gutsy integrity . . . that won me over.” 

http://bit.ly/x2V1v4

[elvisbego]

Janus in the Kenyon Review Online

Over at The Kenyon Review, my story ‘Janus’ has just been published. 

Begins like this: 

Listen, it was in his twenty-seventh year that my poor brother Gael—the red sheep of the family, which is why Papa had sent him up the mountain to think some more of it all in the divided house of our grandparents—grew the head of Adolf Hitler at the top of his back, just below his curly nape. The head began as a scarlet cyst, swelled to this hump as big as an aubergine, and then he, or rather our grandparents, because he would need a mirror, watched it hew itself into that shape we all know too ill, toothbrush moustache, greasy combover and the rest of what should or really should not be there. The terrible shrieking came later.

See the rest here.

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

It never ends, the bruise of being–

Kevin Young, opening lines to “Greening,” Kenyon Review (vol. 33, no. 2, Spring 2011)

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Some extraordinary work by 1939 Press.

“Witness" by Benjamin Landry. The background was created with an India ink and salt resist, then jet-printed and letterpressed. It is signed by the author.

As for "Séance" by Melissa Ginsburg, 1939 Press used Suminagashi (a Japanese marbling technique) and letterpressed it in two colors. It is signed by the poet as well.

The student associates did each step of the process from choosing paper, setting up the press, and mixing the ink, to clean-up. They chose two poems from the Kenyon Review, got permission from the poets to create the broadsides and engaged in creative design thinking exercises to generate ideas for concept, image and typographical layout. Each broadside required the plates to be hand-inked on the iron sign press and printed one sheet at a time.

(If you are not a current student and would like to try this kind of work, Ellen Sheffield and Gretchen Henderson are leading a workshop called the Art of Text in the summertime.)

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A short poem by Tara Skurtu. 

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Have a nice weekend! #Friday #lastdayofSpringBreak

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Can’t get enough of this poem by Gökçenur Ç. http://bit.ly/1nijM9e