Articles on Utah literary arts, Utah authors, Utah literature and poetry published in 15 Bytes.
After a short hiatus, we are excited to return to our READ LOCAL First series with three selections from Ogden poet Angelika Brewer. Informally trained and largely self-taught, Brewer was taught to read, write and embrace her creativity by her teenage mother and her almost entirely blind grandmother. […]
The Utah Division of Arts & Museums has announced Lisa Bickmore will be Utah’s new Poet Laureate. Established in 1997, the position is “a governor-appointed advocate for literature and the arts throughout the state, who presents in communities, schools, libraries, and public events,” according to the press release. […]
(Solve For) X, Katharine Coles’ latest collection, is loaded with lush work that is entirely captivating: I spent 10 weeks on the first poem alone — all eight lines of it. Immobilized by its wit and mesmerizing rhythm, its delightfully puzzling message — I couldn’t bear to move […]
I’m particularly interested in mysteries with no solution . . . . I work for myself, picking subjects and topics that intrigue me—despite the stress and grinding economic hardship that sometimes go along with it. It’s one of those trade-offs writers and artists make with the hope it […]
In addition to chapbooks and incidental publications, poet and Utah Valley University professor Rob Carney has published three volumes of poetry. His fourth and latest book, however, comprises 42 innovative prose chronicles, each suitable for dipping into to nourish and kick-start the imagination. Because the form of expository […]
This book of essays opens with a memory of a song sung by the writer’s grandmother. “A voice that could make people cry,” the writer writes. Her grandmother was asked to sing a popular song as an emotional blessing or benediction at a celebration of the Boulder (Hoover) […]
“I’m not the artist my family members are, but I write.” What Ashley Marie Farmer almost certainly means is that she never felt the sense of vocation that led her grandmother, mom, and sister to paint, her brother to shape pottery, and her grandfather to build a house […]
“The best poems change all the while,” says Brenda Sieczkowski in this recording for our Poetry in Pajamas series. And she provides an example in the work of Kathryn Cowles, who, Sieczkowski says, has influenced her as a poet and a person. Cowles, a Provo native who studied […]
The youngest poet featured in this year’s installment of Poets in Pajamas, Chelsea Guevara discovered poetry in high school, but she had to wait until college before she heard the work of anyone not white or male. She discovered Rita Dove in her first semester at the University […]
Ken Sanders has been dealing knowledgeably in antiquarian books for half a century. (That’s why he has appeared on “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS for the past 17 years.) His downtown bookstore, at 268 S. 200 East, where Sanders has been located for 25 years, is treasured by aficionados […]
An arts community becomes especially vibrant when the people help managing it are part of it. Willy Palomo’s job at the Utah Humanities is running the Center for the Book, whose mission is to “foster a love of books as well as the exploration of contemporary issues through […]
Nancy Takacs’ fourth full-length poetry collection, Dearest Water (Mayapple Press 2022, 77pp.) continues the poet’s journey toward the spiritual center of wilderness, whether encountered out-of-doors (on a desert clifftop, say, or under a star-studded Western night sky) or glimpsed interiorly, after an argument with a beloved husband or […]
You probably know Matthew Ivan Bennett from his plays, whether for the stage — like his 2013 play about gender identity, Eric(a), or Mesa Verde, which explored the enduring scars of chronic illness — or for the radio (listen here for a recording of “Sleepy Hollow,” produced by […]
“I recently read Leila Chatti’s Deluge and was awed by her unflinching gaze at chronic illness,” says Kathryn Knight Sonntag, a writer, poet and landscape architect who lives in Salt Lake City. “In her twenties, Chatti, a young Arab-American woman, started bleeding and didn’t stop. Her physicians referred […]
Writers are sometimes drawn to other writers for what they have in common, like subject or theme. But they also can be drawn by the differences, in say craft or style. Something of both draws Ashley Farmer to Victoria Chang. “Victoria Chang is such a masterful, original poet […]
