American literary magazine
Academic journal
The Kenyon Review
is a
literary magazine
based in
Gambier, Ohio
,
US
, home of
Kenyon College
.
The Review
was founded in 1939
[1]
[2]
by
John Crowe Ransom
, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until
1959
.
The Review
has published early works by generations of important writers, including
Robert Penn Warren
,
Ford Madox Ford
,
Robert Lowell
,
Delmore Schwartz
,
Flannery O'Connor
,
Boris Pasternak
,
Bertolt Brecht
,
Peter Taylor
,
Dylan Thomas
,
Anthony Hecht
,
Maya Angelou
,
Rita Dove
,
Derek Walcott
,
Thomas Pynchon
,
Don Delillo
,
Woody Allen
,
Louise Erdrich
,
William Empson
,
Linda Gregg
,
Mark Van Doren
,
Kenneth Burke
, and
Ha Jin
.
[3]
The magazine's short stories have won more
O. Henry Awards
than any other nonprofit journal?42 in all.
[4]
[5]
[6]
Many poems that first appeared in the quarterly have been reprinted in
The Best American Poetry series
, and the magazine is one of the most frequent sources for the series, where poems originally in
The Kenyon Review
have appeared in the editions for
1992
,
1993
,
1994
,
1996
,
1997
,
1998
,
2001
,
2002
,
2003
, and
2006
.
History
[
edit
]
The magazine was started in 1939.
[7]
During his 21-year tenure as editor,
John Crowe Ransom
made the magazine "perhaps the best known and most influential literary magazine in the English-speaking world during the 1940s and '50s".
[3]
In 1959
Robie Macauley
succeeded Ransom as editor of
The Kenyon Review
,
[8]
[9]
where he published fiction and poetry by
John Barth
,
T. S. Eliot
,
Nadine Gordimer
,
Robert Graves
,
Randall Jarrell
,
Richmond Lattimore
,
Doris Lessing
,
Robert Lowell
,
V. S. Naipaul
,
Joyce Carol Oates
,
Frank O'Connor
,
V. S. Pritchett
,
Thomas Pynchon
,
J. F. Powers
,
Karl Shapiro
,
Jean Stafford
,
Christina Stead
,
Peter Taylor
, and
Robert Penn Warren
,
[10]
[11]
as well as articles, essays and book reviews by
Eric Bentley
,
Cleanth Brooks
,
R. P. Blackmur
,
Malcolm Cowley
,
Richard Ellmann
,
Leslie Fiedler
,
Martin Green
, and
Raymond Williams
. During Macauley's tenure
The Kenyon Review
published the first reviews in English of
Tristes Tropiques
and
A Clockwork Orange
.
[12]
A decade after Ransom left the magazine, in 1969, Kenyon College closed it down as the magazine's reputation dropped and financial burdens continued.
In 1979, the quarterly was started up again.
Marilyn Hacker
, a poet, became the magazine's first full-time editor. "She quickly broadened the quarterly's scope to include more minority and marginalized viewpoints," according to the magazine.
[3]
In 1989,
The Kenyon Review
had a circulation of 4,500.
[13]
In April 1994, the college trustees directed that costs be cut and revenues increased in various ways. Hacker left and an English professor at the college, David H. Lynn (acting editor in 1989?1990), took over on a two-thirds time basis. The publication's finances have stabilized and improved, and a Kenyon Review Board of Trustees has been set up.
[3]
The Kenyon Review
Short Fiction Prize, established in 2008, is awarded annually to a writer who has not previously published a work of fiction.
[14]
Cara Blue Adams
won the inaugural contest, judged by novelist
Alice Hoffman
, while Nick Ripatrazone and
Megan Mayhew Bergman
were named runners-up.
[15]
Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
[
edit
]
The "Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement"
[16]
was created in 2002 to honor careers of extraordinary literary achievement, recognizing writers whose influence and importance have shaped the American literary landscape. It celebrates writers for the courage of their vision, their unparalleled imagination, and for the beauty of their art. The award is presented at a gala benefit dinner each year in New York City.
The first award was presented to novelist
E.L. Doctorow
(Kenyon College '52). Novelist and short-story writer
Joyce Carol Oates
received the award in 2003, while poet
Seamus Heaney
won it in 2004. The 2005 honorees were
Umberto Eco
, the novelist, and
Roger Angell
, the New Yorker fiction editor and baseball writer. In 2006
Ian McEwan
received the award;
Margaret Atwood
followed in 2007, and Pulitzer Prize winning Independence Day author
Richard Ford
in 2008. In 2009
Louise Erdrich
was honored, and in 2010 poet
W.S. Merwin
received the award. Historian, essayist and critic
Simon Schama
was the winner in 2011. Author and human rights advocate
Elie Wiesel
received the honor in 2012. In 2013 the poet
Carl Phillips
received the award, followed by novelist
Ann Patchett
in 2014.
Roger Rosenblatt
, author and playwright, won in 2015. The Kenyon Review honored author
Hilary Mantel
in 2016, and in 2017 acknowledged author
Colm Toibin
. In 2018, the award recognized American poet and essayist
Rita Dove
, a National Humanities and National Medal of Arts recipient, Pulitzer Prize winner and past U.S. poet laureate. In 2019, novelist, short story writer and USC Distinguished Professor of English
T.C. Boyle
received the award. While no award event took place in 2020, in 2021 the Board of Trustees honored its long serving editor, now editor emeritus, David Lynn as the nineteenth recipient of the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.
Walter Mosley
was given the award in 2023.
Proceeds from the annual dinner go to the Kenyon Review's endowment fund, which supports both the magazine and the scholarships and fellowships to the Review's summer writing programs. In 2017, members of the Board of Trustees of Kenyon College, Kenyon Review and Gund Gallery established the E.L. Doctorow Fund to provide additional scholarship support to a student committed to arts and literature.
Poetry submissions
[
edit
]
Poetry editor
David Baker
, in a 2019 interview, provided information on submissions and the process. The magazine receives over 3,000 submissions a year (batches, not individual poems), and publishes some 50 of them per year in the print version, another 25 in the annual "Nature's Nature" feature on ecopoetics (published May-June). Of those 75, perhaps 15 or 20 are solicited, and so around 60 come via the open submission route. More poems are published in the
Kenyon Review Online
. A group of trained student associates do part of the first reading and they have the right to reject; it takes two such rejections before a poem is actually rejected. Baker does the final selection, and David Lynn does the "final sign-off".
[17]
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
"Top 50 Literary Magazine"
.
EWR
. Retrieved
August 17,
2015
.
- ^
"Top 50 Literary Magazines and Metazines"
.
Web Del Sol
. Retrieved
February 10,
2016
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
"History"
the
Kenyon Review
Website, Retrieved January 26, 2007
- ^
"The O. Henry Prize Stories"
.
www.randomhouse.com
. Retrieved
January 25,
2021
.
- ^
"Announcing the 2018 O. Henry Prize Stories"
.
Literary Hub
. May 16, 2018
. Retrieved
January 25,
2021
.
- ^
"Announcing the 100th Annual O. Henry Prize"
.
Literary Hub
. May 16, 2019
. Retrieved
January 25,
2021
.
- ^
Eric L. Haralson (2014).
Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century
. Routledge. p. 402.
ISBN
978-1-317-76322-2
.
- ^
"Education: Ransom Harvest",
Time
, May 12, 1958.
- ^
A John Crowe Ransom Chronology
- ^
"End of the Kenyon?"
Time
, Mar 9, 1970.
- ^
"Robie Macauley" (obituary),
Toledo Blade
, Nov 22, 1995, p. 12.
- ^
Berman RS. "Macauley's 'Kenyon Review' the View from the Sixties."
The Sewanee Review
1979;87 (3): 500?507.
- ^
Blau, Eleanor (October 3, 1989).
"A New Chapter in the Life of Story"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
The Kenyon Review
Short Fiction Prize
- ^
April 2008 KR Newsletter
[
permanent dead link
]
- ^
"The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement"
.
- ^
May, Alan (2019). "An Interview with David Baker, Poet and Editor at Kenyon Review".
Serials Review
.
45
(4): 211?18.
doi
:
10.1080/00987913.2019.1689896
.
S2CID
209103216
.
External links
[
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]