Kenyon Review Fellows Practice What They Teach

Generous gift guarantees permanent funding for the two-year English teaching positions that also work with the Kenyon Review

By Molly Vogel '00
Date

At a place known for its commitment to good writing, the Kenyon Review Fellows not only walk the walk but also teach the steps.

Originally created in 2012, the pair of two-year fellowships are designed for post-graduate emerging writers who each teach one class and also have time for their own writing projects. In addition, they work with the Kenyon Review Associates on the esteemed literary magazine.

“There’s no other fellowship that’s like this: residential, with teaching time, support for their own work and valuable experience directly with the Review,” said Nicole Terez Dutton, the David H. Lynn Editor of the Review. 

President Julie Kornfeld expressed gratitude to the anonymous donor who recently made a gift to fully endow the two positions, guaranteeing funding in perpetuity. “By endowing this position, this donor has ensured generations of Kenyon students will have the opportunity to learn from, and write with, these young talents. Investments like this to Kenyon’s endowment allow us to continue to innovate long into the future,” Kornfeld said.

Dutton noted that the fellows are inspirational — and aspirational — for their students. “There’s this ability to really connect learning across experiences. They’re modeling what it means to be part of a writing community as they progress their own career in the field,” she said.

Jennifer Galvão, who received her MFA from University of Michigan, is nearing the end of her two-year fellowship. “It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience, it’s nice to teach students who really take it seriously.”

Abigail Conklin ’27 is an English major with a creative writing emphasis and neuroscience concentration. She’s a KR Associate who took Galvão’s “Theft and Originality” English class last semester. “Jen is amazing, she really brought the learning process to life. It was an 8 a.m. course so I was prepared for it to be one of my harder courses, but every day, consistently, everybody showed up. Everyone was really excited to be there, everyone was participating… It was a really supportive learning environment.” Conklin said.

Previous KR Fellows have gone on to full-time academic positions while also publishing novels, essays and poetry. (See below.)

Elinam Agbo was a fellow from 2021 to 2023. She’s now assistant professor of creative writing at Bucknell University. “My reading and writing life was constantly enriched by the community of editors, writers, and associates around me. I loved getting to meet visiting writers and workshop participants in the summer.”

“In the English department, I found people who cared about my well-being and were invested in my ability to thrive at Kenyon. And when my fellowship was nearing its end, professors like Jené Schoenfeld, Pashmina Murthy and Michael Leong offered valuable advice for navigating the academic job market. I am immensely grateful to KR and the English department for helping me get where I am today,” she said.

Kenyon College Trustee and Kenyon Review Board Member Jim Finn recalled the original vision of the position, allowing the journal to recognize, publish and support extraordinary writers in the early stages of their careers. “There’s no other fellowship that’s like this. Through the fellows, the College is able to broaden the writing classes it offers while cultivating talent. I’m delighted that these important roles will now be a permanent feature of writing at Kenyon.”

The anonymous endowed gift is invested as part of the College’s endowment. It is a permanent funding source; the income from the fund supports expenses related to the fellows in the operating budget each year. 

The interest in the positions has been overwhelming, according to Dutton. “For someone wanting an immersive professional writing experience, the Kenyon Review Fellow is hard to beat. And our students really benefit from seeing what could come next for them, too, after Kenyon.”

The KR Fellowship can be a powerful springboard, here’s where just a few of the 12 former fellows have landed.

  • Cindy Juyoung Ok

    Cindy Juyoung Ok

    Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of “Ward Toward” and the translator of “The Hell of That Star” by Kim Hyesoon. She is an assistant English professor at the University of California Davis.

  • Elinam Agbo

    Elinam Agbo

    Elinam Agbo’s writing has appeared in Apogee, American Short Fiction, Nimrod, the PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2018, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor in the creative writing program of the English Department at Bucknell University.

  • Molly McCully Brown

    Molly McCully Brown

    Molly McCully Brown is the author of the essay collection “Places I’ve Taken my Body” and the poetry collection “The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded,” which won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. She is director of creative writing at the University of Wyoming and Editor in Chief of Image Journal.

  • Misha Rai

    Misha Rai

    Misha Rai’s short story, “Twenty Years Ago” is a Distinguished story in the 2021 Best American Short Story anthology. She is the only fiction writer to be awarded a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies for creative work. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Sewanee: The University of the South.

  • Natalie Shapero

    Natalie Shapero

    Natalie Shapero’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collections “Popular Longing” (2021), “Hard Child” (2017), and “No Object” (2013). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at University of California Irvine.