by Tim Erickson Meg Day’s debut collection of poems, Last Psalm at Sea Level reveals the realities, at base, of the scientific age in which we find ourselves located: the clash between a quantum and a classical mechanical understanding of nature. That is to say, we can no longer situate ourselves; the very matter of...
...
read more
Sunday Blog Read: Michael Sowder
SUNDAY BLOG READ is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah’s literary writers. Each month, 15 Bytes offers works-in-progress and / or recently published work by some of the state’s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and memoir. Today, 15 Bytes features Logan-based poet Michael Sowder. Last year,...
... read more
... read more
Combining the Visual and the Verbal: The Art(s) of Teresa Jordan
Teresa Jordan not only tells stories with words, but uses her own visual art to enrich the reader’s experience. In her Field Notes from the Grand Canyon, published in 2000, watercolor sketches and her handwritten notes fill some pages, balanced by type-set essays on other pages. In Field Notes from Yosemite, published in 2002, watercolor...
... read more
... read more
Messy Corners: Jean Kane’s Make Me
reviewed by Nathaniel Taggart At turns dark, playful, and furiously-paced, Jean Kane’s debut poetry collection, Make Me, exhibits a whimsical defiance towards authority and the expectations of a contemporary reader of poetry. The cover of the collection is a helpful “tell”—the title of the collection is spelled out by tools and household knick-knacks (with a...
... read more
... read more
David Pace, Postum and the Three Nephites
When he’s not busy raising money for Repertory Dance Theatre or editing 15 Bytes’ literary content, David Pace pounds away at his laptop, tablets and phone, writing his own fiction and essays. After two decades of writing and re-writing a novel manuscript, Pace is anticipating the publication of his first novel, Dream House on Golan...
... read more
... read more
Teresa Jordan’s The Year of Living Virtuously (Weekends Off): A Meditation on the Search for Meaning in an Ordinary Life
by Lisa Bickmore When, at the beginning of the New Year, the great separation occurs—I’m talking about the separation between the resolution makers and the resolution deniers—you’ll have to count me among the makers. I like the idea of a reassessment, a chance to reflect and set a different course. I was discussing this with...
... read more
... read more
Lit New: Bite-size poetry, Sugar House Review and 15 Bytes Book Awards
The Utah Division of Arts & Museums has begun 2015 with a new installment of their Bite-Size Poetry feature, where they invite notable Utah poets to read one of their short poems. They’re stylishly produced by TWIG Media Lab and will be produced once a month. The January feature is Rob Carney reading “What Any...
... read more
... read more
Believable Light: Emma Lou Warner Thayne, 1924-2014
Emma Lou Thayne, beloved Mormon poet, English teacher and essayist, died earlier this month of congestive heart failure at age 90. Casualene Meyer, who recently interviewed Thayne, files this memorial for 15 Bytes. * “Out of my life of being loved and encouraged, lavished with kindness and understanding, I could try, in telling my stories,...
... read more
... read more
Literary Gift Guide: Books to Fish, Pray and Cut Your Fingers By
In its second year of regularly covering literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry, 15 Bytes cast its net broadly. The magazine and blog reviewed works by Utah and Mountain West authors, as well as books that had a particular relevance to Utah and Western audiences. It also experimented with its first “inverted interview” in which, during...
... read more
... read more
Furrowed Lines Eye-Measured and Trued: Braden Hepner’s “Pale Harvest”
by Larry Menlove Braden Hepner’s first novel, Pale Harvest (Torrey House Press), is a Sisyphean tale of a young man yearning for more than warm udders, manure, and the patience to make a straight-line furrow with an old tractor held together with bailing wire. The novel is set on a dairy farm in northern Utah,...
... read more
... read more
Life in El Oltro Lado: Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us, A Memoir
Author Reyna Grande will appear as part of the six-week-long Utah Humanities Book Festival Oct. 25, 2014 at 4 pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library, Auditorium, 210 East 400 South, downtown. Copies of the book will be available for sale and to be signed by the author. by Krystal K. Baker When Reyna’s...
... read more
... read more
A Life, Any Life, One life: Jeff Metcalf’s Requiem for the Living: A Memoir
reviewed by Lynn K. Kilpatrick Jeff Metcalf will read and discuss his new book Requiem for the Living: A Memoir as part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival, October 7, 2014 at 7 pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library, 4th Floor Conference Room, 210 East 400 South. When I teach creative nonfiction, I...
... read more
... read more
