Back to the Future: TKR Adds Letterpress

The Kenyon Review Editor David H. Lynn’s editorial in the newest issue (spring 2010) comments on the “future of literary publishing.” TKR itself went part-digital a while back with KROnline to complement TKR in print, as well as adding a daily blog, online book discussions, and collaborating with JSTOR to complete an electronic archive.

Lynn comments, “It surely would have been easier simply to continue printing this journal four times a year and leave it at that. But I’m convinced that sooner or later, such isolated publications will come to seem anachronisms, curiosities, not vibrant players in the literary community.”

But far from being a full-fledged missive on going digital, Lynn recognizes the continuing place of ink and paper in our lives, its historical relevance, and its place in the lives of future readers and writers, which is why TKR will be launching a small letterpress operation. “Even as we develop literary media for the future, I believe it’s our responsibility to keep the old technologies, teaching our associates where all the current publishing structures originated. Letting them get their hands dirty.”

TKR is planning printing opportunities for their summer program, and looks to add chapbooks and broadsides in the future, “just for the fun of it.”