The Kenyon Review
Encyclopedia
The Kenyon Review is a Literary magazine
based in Gambier, Ohio
, USA
, home of Kenyon College
. The Review was founded in 1939
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
, Woody Allen
, Louise Erdrich
, William Empson
, Linda Gregg
, Mark Van Doren
, Kenneth Burke
, Delmore Schwartz
, and Ha Jin
.
The magazine's short stories have won more O. Henry Award
s than any other nonprofit journal—-most recently, two in 2004. 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
.
The magazine also employs Kenyon students as Student Associates and Interns.
made it, according to the magazine's Web site, "perhaps the best known and most influential literary magazine in the English-speaking world during the 1940s and '50s."
In 1959 Robie Macauley
succeeded Ransom as editor of The Kenyon Review, where he published fiction and poetry by John Barth
http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/4646/Kenyon-Review.html, 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
, 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
.
A decade after Ransom left the magazine, in 1969, Kenyon College closed it down as its reputation dropped and financial burdens continued. In 1979, however, 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.
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 1989-90), took over on a two-thirds time basis. The publications finances have stabilized and improved and a Kenyon Review Board of Trustees has been set up.
The Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, established in 2008, is awarded annually to writers under the age of thirty. The inaugural contest, judged by novelist Alice Hoffman
, was won by Cara Blue Adams; Nick Ripatrazone and Megan Mayhew Bergman were named runners-up.
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
based in Gambier, Ohio
Gambier, Ohio
Gambier is a village in Knox County, Ohio, United States. The population was 1,871 at the 2000 census.Gambier is the home of Kenyon College and was named after one of Kenyon College's early benefactors, Lord Gambier....
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, home of Kenyon College
Kenyon College
Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...
. The Review was founded in 1939
1939 in literature
The year 1939 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*December 25 - A Christmas Carol is read before a radio audience for the first time....
by John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959
1959 in literature
The year 1959 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*April 30 - Theatrical première of Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards, originally performed on radio in 1932....
. The Review has published early works by generations of important writers, including Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
, Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
, Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
, Delmore Schwartz
Delmore Schwartz
Delmore Schwartz was an American poet and short story writer from Brooklyn, New York.-Biography:Schwartz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, Harry and Rose, both Romanian Jews, separated when Schwartz was nine, and their divorce had a profound effect on him. Later, in 1930,...
, Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
, Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, Peter Taylor
Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor
For other people named Peter Taylor, see Peter Taylor.Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor was a U.S. author and writer.-Biography:...
, Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
, Anthony Hecht
Anthony Hecht
Anthony Evan Hecht was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, and the Holocaust being recurrent themes in his work.-Early years:Hecht was born in New York...
, Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...
, Rita Dove
Rita Dove
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. From 1993-1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now popularly known as "U.S. Poet Laureate"...
, Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
, Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich
Karen Louise Erdrich, known as Louise Erdrich, is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American heritage. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...
, William Empson
William Empson
Sir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet.He was known as "燕卜荪" in Chinese.He was widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics...
, Linda Gregg
Linda Gregg
Linda Alouise Gregg is an American poet.-Biography:Although born just miles northwest of New York City, Ms. Gregg grew up on the other side of the country, in Marin County, California. She received both her Bachelor of Arts, in 1967, and her Master of Arts, in 1972, from San Francisco State College...
, Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation...
, Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal history:...
, Delmore Schwartz
Delmore Schwartz
Delmore Schwartz was an American poet and short story writer from Brooklyn, New York.-Biography:Schwartz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, Harry and Rose, both Romanian Jews, separated when Schwartz was nine, and their divorce had a profound effect on him. Later, in 1930,...
, and Ha Jin
Ha Jin
Jīn Xuěfēi is a contemporary Chinese-American writer and novelist using the pen name Ha Jin . Ha comes from his favorite city, Harbin.-Early life:...
.
The magazine's short stories have won more O. Henry Award
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
s than any other nonprofit journal—-most recently, two in 2004. 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
The Best American Poetry 1992
The Best American Poetry 1992, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Charles Simic....
, 1993
The Best American Poetry 1993
The Best American Poetry 1993, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Louise Glück.-Poets and poems included:-External links:...
, 1994
The Best American Poetry 1994
The Best American Poetry 1994, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor A. R. Ammons.-Poets and poems included:-External links:* , with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared...
, 1996
The Best American Poetry 1996
The Best American Poetry 1996, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Adrienne Rich.-Poets and poems included:-External links:...
, 1997
The Best American Poetry 1997
The Best American Poetry 1997, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor James Tate.-Poets and poems included:-External links:* , with links to each publication where the poems originally appeared...
, 1998
The Best American Poetry 1998
The Best American Poetry 1999, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor John Hollander.-Poets and poems included:-External links:...
, 2001
The Best American Poetry 2001
The Best American Poetry 2001, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Robert Hass.One of the poems Hass chose for the volume was by his wife, Brenda Hillman....
, 2002
The Best American Poetry 2002
The Best American Poetry 2002, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman, with poems chosen by guest editor Robert Creeley.The first print run for the book was 30,000....
, 2003
The Best American Poetry 2003
The Best American Poetry 2003, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Yusef Komunyakaa....
, and 2006
The Best American Poetry 2006
The Best American Poetry 2006, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman , and poet Billy Collins, guest editor....
.
Masthead
- Editor: David H. Lynn, professor of English at Kenyon College
- Advisory Board: David BergmanDavid BergmanDavid Bergman is an American writer and English professor at Towson University. He was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts , grew up in Laurelton, New York, and graduated from Kenyon College and earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University ....
, Robb Forman DewRobb Forman DewAmerican author Robb Forman Dew has described writing as "a strange absorption about this alternate world and the way it mixes with your real life."...
, E.L. Doctorow, Daniel Mark EpsteinDaniel Mark EpsteinDaniel Mark Epstein is an American poet, dramatist and biographer.Epstein earned his B.A. from Kenyon College...
, Alice FultonAlice FultonAlice Fulton is an American author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.- Biography :Fulton was born and raised in Troy, New York, the youngest of three daughters. Her father was the proprietor of the historic Phoenix Hotel, and her mother was a visiting nurse. She began writing poetry in high school...
, Amitav GhoshAmitav GhoshAmitav Ghosh , is a Bengali Indian author best known for his work in the English language.-Life:Ghosh was born in Calcutta on July 11, 1956, to Lieutenant Colonel Shailendra Chandra Ghosh, a retired officer of the pre-independence Indian Army, and was educated at The Doon School; St...
, Rachel HadasRachel HadasRachel Hadas is an American poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. Her most recent essay collection is Classics: Essays , and her most recent poetry collection is The Ache of Appetite . Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ingram Merrill Foundation Grants, the O.B...
, Michael S. HarperMichael S. HarperMichael Steven Harper is an American poet from Brooklyn, who was the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993. He has published ten books of poetry, two of which, "Dear John, Dear Coltrane" and "Images of Kin" , have been nominated for the National Book Award. A great deal of his poetry...
, John HollanderJohn HollanderJohn Hollander is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University...
, Lewis HydeLewis HydeLewis Hyde is a scholar, essayist, translator, cultural critic and writer whose scholarly work focuses on the nature of imagination, creativity, and property.-Early life:...
, Allison JosephAllison JosephAllison Joseph is an American poet, editor and professor. She is author of six poetry collections, most recently, My Father's Kites: Poems . She grew up in Toronto and the Bronx. She graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A., and from Indiana University with an M.F.A...
, Rebecca McClanahanRebecca McClanahanRebecca McClanahan is a former Democratic Representative of the second district of the Missouri House of Representatives, including parts of Putnam, Sullivan, and Adair counties. She was defeated in the 2010 general election by Zachary Wyatt...
, Reginald McKnightReginald McKnight-Life:McKnight was born 26 February 1956 in Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany to an Air Force family; therefore, he moved around a lot in childhood, although he calls Colorado home...
, Joyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
, Wyatt PruntyWyatt PruntyWyatt Prunty is an American poet and author associated with the New Formalism movement. He is the author of eight collections of poetry and two books of criticism and is a frequent reviewer and essayist for poetry and literary journals...
, Mary Jo SalterMary Jo SalterMary Jo Salter is an American poet, a coeditor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry and a professor in the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University.-Life:...
, Michael Wood
The magazine also employs Kenyon students as Student Associates and Interns.
History
During his 21-year tenure as head of the magazine, John Crowe RansomJohn Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
made it, according to the magazine's Web site, "perhaps the best known and most influential literary magazine in the English-speaking world during the 1940s and '50s."
In 1959 Robie Macauley
Robie Macauley
Robie Mayhew Macauley was an editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned over 50 years.-Early life:...
succeeded Ransom as editor of The Kenyon Review, where he published fiction and poetry by John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...
http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/4646/Kenyon-Review.html, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".Her writing has long dealt...
, Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
, Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role which now holds the title of US Poet Laureate.-Life:Jarrell was a native of Nashville, Tennessee...
, Richmond Lattimore
Richmond Lattimore
Richmond Alexander Lattimore was an American poet and translator known for his translations of the Greek classics, especially his versions of the Iliad and Odyssey, which are generally considered as among the best English translations available.Born to David and Margaret Barnes Lattimore in...
, Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
, Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
, V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
, Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
, Frank O'Connor
Frank O'Connor
Frank O’Connor was an Irish author of over 150 works, best known for his short stories and memoirs.-Early life:...
, V. S. Pritchett
V. S. Pritchett
Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett CH CBE , was a British writer and critic. He was particularly known for his short stories, collected in a number of volumes...
, Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, J. F. Powers
J. F. Powers
J. F. Powers was a Roman Catholic American novelist and short-story writer who often drew his inspiration from developments in the Catholic Church, and was known for his studies of midwestern Catholic priests...
, Karl Shapiro
Karl Shapiro
Karl Jay Shapiro was an American poet. He was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946.-Biography:...
, Jean Stafford
Jean Stafford
Jean Stafford was an American short story writer and novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford in 1970....
, Christina Stead
Christina Stead
Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.-Biography:...
, Peter Taylor
Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor
For other people named Peter Taylor, see Peter Taylor.Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor was a U.S. author and writer.-Biography:...
, and Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
, as well as articles, essays and book reviews by Eric Bentley
Eric Bentley
Eric Bentley is a critic, playwright, singer, editor and translator. He became an American citizen in 1948, and currently lives in New York City...
, Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
, R. P. Blackmur
R. P. Blackmur
Richard Palmer Blackmur was an American literary critic and poet. He was born and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. An autodidact, Blackmur worked in a bookshop after graduating from high school, and attended lectures at Harvard University without enrolling...
, Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
, Richard Ellmann
Richard Ellmann
Richard David Ellmann was a prominent American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats...
, Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working...
, Martin Green
Martin Green (author)
Martin Green is an English-born writer, editor and publisher.-Background:Born in Stockport, England, Green was schooled at A. S. Neill's Summerhill, while his parents fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.Preston, Paul Doves of war: four women of Spain. Harper Collins,...
, and Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
. During Macauley's tenure The Kenyon Review published the first reviews in English of Tristes Tropiques
Tristes Tropiques
Tristes Tropiques is a memoir, first published in France in 1955, by the anthropologist and structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It documents his travels and anthropological work, focusing principally on Brazil, though it refers to many other places, such as the Caribbean and India...
and A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
.
A decade after Ransom left the magazine, in 1969, Kenyon College closed it down as its reputation dropped and financial burdens continued. In 1979, however, the quarterly was started up again. Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English at the City College of New York....
, 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.
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 1989-90), took over on a two-thirds time basis. The publications finances have stabilized and improved and a Kenyon Review Board of Trustees has been set up.
The Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, established in 2008, is awarded annually to writers under the age of thirty. The inaugural contest, judged by novelist Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1996 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name...
, was won by Cara Blue Adams; Nick Ripatrazone and Megan Mayhew Bergman were named runners-up.