Articles on Utah literary arts, Utah authors, Utah literature and poetry published in 15 Bytes.
“Many people might not have a specific book in mind when they come in, but they look through our shelves and when they find ‘it’, they just know.” Cindy Dumas describes one type of experience that customers might expect when they visit an independent bookstore. For Cindy, the […]
“I’ve had a good run.” My son and I joke about this pronouncement, now, because I’ve said it so many times before, promised to give up poetry cold turkey, only to find half a pack of menthols stashed in the writing desk drawer and start up again. But […]
Neeli Cherkovski was raised in a bohemian Los Angeles family where his father ran a bookstore. At age 16 he created the literary journal, Black Cat Review. From 1969-71 he and lifelong friend Charles Bukowski created and edited the literary magazine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. Throughout Cherkovski’s career he […]
If you’ve never been to Tokyo, or if you’ve never wanted to (but maybe you’ve wanted to want to), then Michael Mejia’s mimesis of the place is a small rapture to get you started. It’s a crucial book (and I mean crucial literally) that not only defamiliarizes the […]
Georgia O’Keeffe was an artist of such compelling vision that an entire region of the United States redecorated to match her aesthetic. I don’t mean that as snark. Contemplation of O’Keeffe’s art actually changes the way we understand erosional geomorphology, flowering plants, sun-bleached bones, deep blue skies, and […]
When the “blue nudes took themselves off the canvas,” writes poet Laura Stott, “It wasn’t easy getting out from behind the glass.” Blue Nude Migration: A Painting and Poetry Collaboration,an exhibit by Laura and her sister Katheryn Stott currently on display at the Anderson-Foothill Branch of Salt Lake City’s […]
READ LOCAL First (RLF) is a READ LOCAL monthly installment of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction and memoir by some of Utah’s most celebrated and promising writers. Formerly “Read Local Sunday” and originally “Sunday Blog Read,” 15 Bytes founder Shawn Rossiter and Literary Editor David Pace launched the publication in […]
When I picked up this slim chapbook my first impression was how pretty it is to look at. The cover art resembles a map. Not the newfangled digital kind that talks you over a cliff as soon as you let down your guard–an old-fashioned paper map with carefully […]
It has been almost five years since playwright Shawn Fisher first ventured into Utah’s theater scene with his play Do Not Hit Golf Balls Into Mexico at the Salt Lake Acting Company. It began as two performances on a minimal set. “I admire [SLAC’s] commitment to developing new work and […]
In the memoir An American (Homeless) in Paris, the reader is invited to la mansion of author Chris Ames, a tent pitched atop an abandoned golf course overlooking the bourgeois center of Paris. Having returned from a sabbatical year of travel after being extricated from French domesticity as a result of divorce […]
Jean Valentine, when once asked about the difference between a short poem and a longer poem, answered that a short poem was “like putting your face in icy water.” The water in Mike White’s Addendum to a Miracle, winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize in Britain, is indeed […]
Since 2015, Rock Canyon Poets in Provo has proven to be a community hub for poets to “promote the disciplined study of writing poetry as a serious art form.” With a little more than 50 members born out of a group of close friends from Utah Valley University’s […]
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, January 25, READ LOCAL featured poets Natalie Taylor and Paisley Rekdal. […]
Lance Olsen’s previous novel, Theories of Forgetting ( Reviewed in 15 Bytes 4/3/2014), relates how when Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty is above water it is typically experienced as a simple labyrinth: visitors can’t resist walking the spiral to the center and out again. In his new book […]
Photo by Austen Diamond. Paisley Rekdal was recently named the Utah Poet Laureate, a five-year post, and it is obvious that she deserves the title. Besides an upcoming collection of poetry in which she reimagines Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Rekdal has published five collections of poetry and three books of non-fiction. […]
