The Kenyon Review, the literary journal at Kenyon College, recently released its list of recommended winter reads.

Here is a selected list of staff members and their recommendations:

Nicole Terez Dutton, editor

Randall Kenan’s last book of short stories, “If I Had Two Wings,” returns us to the lush fictional stomping ground of Tims Creek, North Carolina.

David Baker, poetry editor

Two brand-new poetry anthologies: The current poet laureate, Joy Harjo, has edited “When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry.” The influential curator and editor Kevin Young has offered an equally essential anthology, “African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song.” 

Geeta Kothari, nonfiction editor

“The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” by Deesha Philyaw. This charming and entertaining collection of short stories focuses on Black women at various stages of their lives: mothers, daughters, siblings, lovers. 

Kirsten Reach, fiction editor

What a year to read about friendship and caring for one another. “The Death of Vivek Oji,” by Akwaeke Emezi asks, "When someone you love dies, what do you owe the ones they loved?" There’s real tenderness here — delicate, warm and irresistible.

Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, associate editor

What book could more accurately capture this year of grief than Victoria Chang’s “Obit”? Chang reimagines the form of the newspaper obituary to express the way grief requires that we surrender everything to its erasures. One by one, the familiar things of the world vanish and Chang writes their obits in prose poems of merciless beauty. 

For the full list, visit kenyon.edu/news/archive/winter-reads.