UTAH'S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001
Published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization.

Our monthly edition is published on the first Wednesday of every month and we follow that up with daily bytes posts on this site. You'll find links to artistsofutah's other programming to the right.
Literary Arts
Where to Go to Hear and See

Where to Go to Hear and See

The librarian on the City Library’s fourth floor proffered a warning: there hadn’t been enough space to hang everything in the correct order. She referred to the thirteen poems by Lynn Kilpatrick and fifteen drawings by John Sproul that together comprise To Be Unnamed. Probably everyone has an opinion on which works of art look...

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ONE FATHER'S APPREHENSION: Interview with memoirist Maximilian Werner

ONE FATHER’S APPREHENSION: Interview with memoirist Maximilian Werner

Maximilian Werner will read from and sign copies of his memoir Gravity Hill at the King’s English Bookshop 1511 S. 1500 E. Salt Lake City Friday May 10, 2013, 7 pm. Maximilian Werner’s memoir Gravity Hill contains stories nested inside other stories. In its framing tale, we meet Max about five years ago, a young...

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A Tale of Two Readings

A Tale of Two Readings

Literary readings are curious animals. They’re the writers’ primary public event to see and be seen, hear and be heard. But what are they really? Theater? A discussion? Celebrity sighting? Two readings in April, one following the other, became a study in contrasts for me. The first, the annual release of sine cera, a DiverseCity...

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David Kranes: Dramaturgy of Space

David Kranes: Dramaturgy of Space

David Kranes will tell you he’s driven. Since his arrival in Utah from his home in New England in 1967, he has taught students at the University of Utah Creative Writing Program, directed the Sundance Playwright’s Lab, written 7 novels and now, with his recently released The Legend’s Daughter (Torrey House Press) three volumes of short stories...

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Death in the Present: Katharine Cole's The Earth Is Not Flat

Death in the Present: Katharine Cole’s The Earth Is Not Flat

Katharine Coles couldn’t trust her senses. On a grant from the National Science Foundation, she boarded a ship to cross the infamous Drake Passage, the world’s roughest crossing, to live in Antarctica. For the celebrated writer, it was a hunt for poetry and instability, a dislocation from ordinary life. But she also found fear, the...

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Jana Richman's Ordinary Truth

Jana Richman’s Ordinary Truth

In a tense moment near the climax of The Ordinary Truth, a woman in her seventies wades across a rocky creek in a remote forest in the dark of night. As she feels her way, her senses heightened by danger, she conjures for readers the feeling of finding their way in the dark by the...

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15 Bytes reveals "Utah's 15"

15 Bytes reveals “Utah’s 15″

If you missed our awards reception at Finch Lane Friday night you were not privy to the winners of our new program “Utah’s 15 Most Influential Artists”. These past couple months we asked our readership to nominate the artists they felt have changed the cultural landscape of our fine state. You responded in a big...

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David Kranes on KUER

David Kranes on KUER

For our Sunday literary post we have a bit of listening for you rather than reading. Playwright, teacher, novelist and short story writer David Kranes sat down to talk with KUER’s Doug Fabrizio this week. In May Kranes’s new collection of short stories, The Legend’s Daughter, will be published by Torrey House Press. Set in...

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Chad Crane, Painter and Poet

Chad Crane, Painter and Poet

We sat down yesterday with Chad Crane, one of the few artists involved in the 35×35 exhibit we had yet to interview for our associated video project (come to the Awards Reception at Finch Lane Friday the 19th and you’ll see what we’re talking about). If you’ve been to the show, you may remember Crane’s...

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Sunday Blog Read...Michael McLane

Sunday Blog Read…Michael McLane

Each month we post for your reading enjoyment literary works-in-progress…works soon-to-be-published…or works recently released. The Sunday Blog Read is a glimpse into the working minds and hearts of writers with a Utah connection. And we’re pretty confident you’ll be inspired. So…curl up on the couch with your favorite cup-a-joe and enjoy! * * * In...

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Gravity Hill, by Max Werner

Gravity Hill, by Max Werner

A bee at work in the cherry blossoms Gravity Hill, by Maximilian Werner For an essayist and fishing enthusiast, popular University of Utah writing professor Maximilian Werner didn’t do too badly with Crooked Creek, his first novel. Nominated for the Utah Book Award, it went up against In This Light, a collection of short stories...

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Swimming for Your Life:  Interview with Memoirist David McGlynn

Swimming for Your Life: Interview with Memoirist David McGlynn

In 2008, The End of the Straight and Narrow, a collection of short stories by then-grad student David McGlynn, won the Utah Book Award. In 2012, McGlynn, now a professor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, published A Door In the Ocean, a memoir that “charts the violent origins of one man’s faith and the struggle...

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An Interview with Mark Bailey, Publisher of Torrey House Press

An Interview with Mark Bailey, Publisher of Torrey House Press

  Mark Bailey and Kirsten Allen, the duo behind Utah-based Torrey House Press, have had a steep learning curve, including moving from a print-on-demand model to a traditional distributor of product through Consortium. Since 2010, when they launched Torrey House Press here in Utah, they’ve kicked out seven titles beginning with Maximilian Werner’s slim but...

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The Earth Is Not Flat: A Reading at Kings English

The Earth Is Not Flat: A Reading at Kings English

The theme of Friday evening’s festivities at King’s English was “The Earth Is Not Flat,” from the title of Katherine Coles’ fifth volume of poetry, just published and eagerly anticipated by followers of Utah’s leading poet. If that title sounds more like it belongs on a scientific treatise than it does a collection of lyrical...

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When Women Were Birds: Terry Tempest Williams and Silence

When Women Were Birds: Terry Tempest Williams and Silence

Situated next to Provo, Utah, Orem is one of the most conservative communities in the United States. I mention the politics only to mark the courage of Terry Tempest Williams and why so many of us were struck by her transparency at the Orem Library when she highlighted one particular passage from her exquisite memoir...

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