Articles on Utah literary arts, Utah authors, Utah literature and poetry published in 15 Bytes.
A poet came to my door the other day, “as poets are wont to do,” quipped a friend on hearing of it. The poet who knocked, Katherine Indermauer, has published a fine chapbook, Facing the Mirror, that I wanted after reading a vibrant review in 15 Bytes by Rebecca Pyle, a […]
The award-winning writer and photographer Andrew Romriell writes about queerness, religion, body image, gender identity, and sexuality. Here we present his Alchemic-like: 16 Ways to Look at Transformation.
“This is not safe,” is a caution we should attend to, but might feel we can overlook. “This is not safe, and it can’t be made safe” is another matter. A threat that cannot be neutralized is a threat indeed. In 1940, during the lull in the storm […]
Welcome to our August installment of READ LOCAL First—the world’s most extensive repository of Utah-related poets and writers. Today, we are proud to introduce creative nonfiction writer Natalie Hopkins. Originally from Florida, Hopkins now lives in Utah Valley. She fell in love with creative nonfiction while studying for […]
Sometime in the 1980s, an edition of Douglas H. Thayer’s Summer Fire was published bearing a jacket blurb, written by Orson Scott Card, reading, “I have never read a better Mormon novel.” His calling it a “Mormon novel” makes Summer Fire a problem for a critic like me, […]
Face it, Katherine Indermauer’s chapbook Facing the Mirror says: since mirrors arrived, people, and our world, have never been the same. So powerful are mirrors, says this small spell of a book — an essay which also has, mildly, sometimes, the feel of a scientific/alchemic journal – that […]
Welcome to our Independence Day issue of READ LOCAL First, our monthly celebration of Utah-related poets and writers. Today, we proudly introduce Jeremy Spencer Rees. Rees, a Texas native, recently finished his undergraduate degree in Utah. In the final year of his undergrad he was awarded second place […]
Heresies of Nature, Margaret Blair Young’s 2002 novel about a Mormon family gripped by a chronic, unpredictable illness, begins with a bit of authorial slight-of-hand. A narrator’s voice and an author’s voice are easy to confuse, and Young takes advantage of it by starting out as herself, speaking […]
From everyone here at 15 Bytes: Happy LGBTQ+ Pride Month and welcome to our June installment of READ LOCAL First — the world’s most extensive repository of Utah-related poets and writers. Today, we are proud to introduce award-winning poet Britt Allen. In May of 2020, Allen completed her Master […]
“He could have been almost anything he wanted, but he chose to be a bad artist. Nobody will ever know why.” The “bad artist” that Buckdancer Skinner refers to here was his father, Adam Skinner, whose disappearance and possible demise reunites his three sons, 33 year-old Jacob, 27 […]
Marilynn Bybee Rockelman describes her work as containing “sexual language” that doesn’t rely on constructions like “f—k” to masquerade for the word itself. Chapter one of her manuscript earned an honorable mention in the Creative Nonfiction category of 2020’s Utah Original Writing Competition.
There’s a scene from playwright David Kranes’ 1971 novel, Margins, set in densely populated New York City, that might appeal to a 15 Bytes reader today. Here we witness a man falling in love with a woman through the medium of art: They walked unhurriedly down Madison Avenue. […]
Retro Furniture Changes Colors — Chroma Gallery
In the late ’80s, Erdmann ran the Salt Lake Contemporary Gallery in downtown Salt Lake where he showed minimalist and color-field art at a time when “Mark Rothko wasn’t a household word.” Reception to the gallery was not overwhelming and it eventually closed down. Since that time, abstract art has failed to achieve a pervasive presence in Utah. The Salt Lake Art Center has had more and more exhibits highlighting contemporary art and Phillips Gallery has survived showing abstract work, but few other venues for abstract art have proven viable…
