Articles on Utah literary arts, Utah authors, Utah literature and poetry published in 15 Bytes.
“The natural world, particularly the wild waters of the west, have been deep balm for my soul. I’m deeply indebted to every stretch of water I’ve had the pleasure to fish.” This book is a gem of wisdom and interesting firsthand accounts from local author and U. English […]
The Utah Division of Arts & Museums has chosen 22 writers in seven categories as the winners of the 60th annual Utah Original Writing Competition. The winners were selected from a total of 195 entries from Utah-based writers. Manuscripts were reviewed in a blind process by judges who […]
In Desert Cabal, Amy Irvine hikes into the Sonoran Desert with coffee, liquor and a handgun to argue with a dead man. Published by Torrey House Press and subtitled “A New Season in the Wilderness,” it’s a narrative essay in 80 pages where the former professional rock climber […]
The Book of Sharks sounds like one of those fabulous fictional works that exist only in an author’s imagination, but in fact, Rob Carney has written an ambitious book of shark poetry that lives up to its mythological title. His piercing shark poems have been swimming into ecological poetry […]
Interesting things happen when you bring two writers together, which is why every quarter Artists of Utah, in conjunction with Salt Lake City Arts Council, brings two Utah writers together for a reading and discussion. On Thursday, September 27, READ LOCAL featured fiction writers Tim Glenn and Todd […]
READ LOCAL First represents Utah’s most comprehensive collection of celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This week we bring you poet, fiction writer, essayist, and translator Andrew Haley. Haley received a Master’s of Arts in British and American Literature from the University of Utah and now […]
To do a profile of Todd Robert Petersen, author of the novel It Needs to Look Like We Tried, it is necessary to get the profile out of the way right up front. Taking him in from the side you first see the thatch perched on his head […]
We are pleased to announce that Hikmet Sidney Loe’s innovative exploration of Robert Smithson’s iconic earthwork, The Spiral Jetty Encyclo, has won the 15 Bytes Book Award for Art Book for 2018. David Habben’s steampunk coloring book and Mary Lee Fulkerson’s survey of women artists of the Great […]
Our relationship to the environment, notions of fatherhood, patriarchy and violence, and the way one can come to live by language appear in the poems of the finalists for this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award in poetry. Nancy Takacs’ “The Worrier,” a collection of interior dialogues coming to […]
Join 15 Bytes as we celebrate exemplary works in nonfiction that explore the trauma of birth, the travails of dementia and the solitude of the desert. The latter, Brooke Williams’ Open Midnight, receives the 15 Bytes Book Award this year (see our review here), with Jennifer Sinor’s Ordinary Trauma and […]
Gabriel Tallent’s debut novel My Absolute Darling may be difficult to read, but the judges of the 15 Bytes Book Awards for Fiction say we should. The story of 14-year-old Turtle Alveston’s abuse at the hands of her father can be harrowing, but redemption and grace are found in […]
READ LOCAL First represents Utah’s most comprehensive collection of celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This week we bring you Todd Robert Petersen. The excerpt was originally from a short story, which took 2nd Place in the 2002 Utah Original Writing Competition. It is now […]
George Handley’s debut novel, “American Fork,” artfully weaves together themes of religion, environment, memory, belonging, nation, faith, and loss with haunting prose and wonderful insight. This novel stands apart as a beautiful, well-crafted story with fully fleshed-out characters. The individual pains and desires of these characters invite readers […]
For those who want to open life’s envelope rather than pass it on sealed, you will find no better companion than Jana Richman. Her new book of essays, Finding Stillness in a Noisy World, provides soul food for end times. Couldn’t we all use a dose of soul […]
READ LOCAL First represents Utah’s most comprehensive collection of celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This week we bring you an excerpt from Tim Glenn’s 2017 Original Writing Competition First Place novel manuscript, Forever Desolation. Glenn is a historian and museum director living in Green River, Utah. He earned […]
The Underwater American Songbook, Rebecca Pyle’s 2018 digital chapbook, is structured around a captivating and engaging conceit: the collection, as Pyle explains in a foreword, is “a body of almost-lyrics about objects found underwater all around New York.” Each of the 10 poems, therefore, focuses on some sunken […]
READ LOCAL First represents Utah’s most comprehensive collection of celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This week we bring you an excerpt from Aaron Cance’s novel-in-progress, The Past Day Will Shine. Cance, proprietor of Sandy-based indie bookstore The Printed Garden, earned a B.A. in English Literature from the University of […]
