2020 Utah Original Writing Competition Winner: Travis Petersen
Petersen’s dialogue is fast; his descriptions are succinct. Chapter 1 of The Prayer of St. Francis adds another worthy addition to the library of READ LOCAL First.
Voices from the River
This month we bring you selections by five local authors. Voices from the River includes pieces by Karen M. Bayard, Sean Patrick McPeak, Suzy Eskenazi, Emilia Wint, and Gail Weinflash.
Collaborative Mural Project Unveiled on Dinwoody Building Celebrates Two Centuries of Utah Women
Look! Waaay up there! That’s an Edie Roberson flying machine perched in a vibrant blue sky on the Dinwoody Building, 37 W. 100 South, in downtown Salt Lake City. Soaring over a wall brimming with portraits of 268 Utah women, it is part of a community-created mural directed […]
Connie Borup: Painting from the Inside Out
Never underestimate the influence of teachers, wherever you may find them. Connie Borup, now one of Utah’s best-known landscape painters, hadn’t the slightest inclination of becoming an artist until she met an art history teacher in Germany. Borup was raised in Kaysville, Utah, a town that was still a largely rural community dominated by fields in the 1950s. Growing up in that environment has its advantages, but Borup always knew she wanted “to get out.” Which explains why she jumped at the chance to become an exchange student. “That was such an eye-opener,” she recalls. “A 17-year-old Mormon girl leaving her town and going to Germany.” At the gymnasium in Cologne, she met Herr Beppo, who opened her eyes to art. “I made a decision right then — I’m going to be an artist.”
Joseph Ostraff: Answers are Good, Questions are Better
“You’re just an appropriator.” That’s what a young, huffy art student said to Joe Ostraff in 1993 when he was a finalist for his current teaching position at Brigham Young University’s art department. Negative comments like that typically bounce right off him. In fact, although he’s sure he […]
Michael Mejia: Matanzas
READ LOCAL First boasts Utah’s most comprehensive collection of accomplished writers who practice fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This month we bring you Michael Mejia, author of the novels TOKYO and Forgetfulness, both published by FC2. Mejia’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including AGNI, DIAGRAM, The […]
Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez’s “Casta Paintings” Are Haunting Works About Hybrid Identity
In the darkened gallery they float like apparitions, life-size outlines of figures captured in poses that shift between submission and aggression, carved masks sprouting from their flattened surface suggesting fear, defiance, bafflement, awe. Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez’s Casta Paintings, currently on exhibit at the Street Gallery of the Utah Museum […]
Lessons in Printing: Klancy Clark de Nevers
Klancy Clark de Nevers’ memoir, Lessons in Printing, explores the life of her father, Kearny Clark, a printer by trade who began to hear voices after the author went to college. Mental illness haunted her father until death but Clark de Nevers was at least ambivalent, or entirely detached at the time. In this beautiful work of atonement, we learn about a “loving but melancholy printer who inherited a small print shop based on old technology, operating in a town in decline.” Yes, we learn about how the author’s father lived and died. But as importantly, we learn about how Klancy de Nevers reconciles the past in order to continue living.
Hector Ahumada
READ LOCAL First represents Utah’s most comprehensive collection of celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This month we bring you Hector Ahumada, a Chilean poet and naturalized citizen who has lived in Salt Lake City for nearly forty years. “Poetry belongs to all genders,” says Hector, a participant […]
Dance West Fest Offers a Buffet of Upcoming Dance
topography n. the physical or natural features of an object or entity and their structural relationships The inaugural Dance West Fest combined workshops hosted individually in the past by Repertory Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, and the University of Utah. The newly branded workshop culminated on Thursday night […]
James Swensen’s “In a Rugged Land” is a Dense but Easily Digestible Look Into a Unique Collaboration
Life magazine published “Three Mormon Towns” on September 6, 1954. Today, the photo-essay by Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams — two of the best-known photographers in the medium’s history — is largely unknown. James Swensen’s new book, In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three […]
Rain, Salt, Rust: Tacey Atsitty’s Elemental Songs
The late Adrienne Rich once described her use of received poetic forms as “asbestos gloves” for handling difficult material. In Tacey M. Atsitty’s new collection Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press), sonnet, sestina, and villanelle surface amid prose poems, columnar incantations, a concrete poem with white […]
Pure Thought Is Magically Made Visible in Guy Dill’s Seven Sculptures at Julie Nester
“The artist Guy Dill has carved out a unique niche for himself on the borderline between abstract and figurative sculpture.” That’s the metaphor that first comes to mind, but the thing is, it doesn’t really work, because he doesn’t carve. They’re assembled in that distinctly American geometric style, […]
Larkin Weyand: We Will Be a Thing
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 Larkin Weyand, who teaches courses in English education, creative writing, and composition at BYU. He taught high school English and art for nine years at American Fork High […]
When Parallels Meet: Mary Toscano at God Hates Robots
From time to time, artists redirect the trajectory of art. Sometimes they make huge changes: ones that large parts of the art world then follow. At other times, subtle, self-contained discoveries stand alone, changing the way we think about art more than the way it’s done. And while […]
Omens, Butterflies and Lamb’s Wool: Three Women at Finch Lane Gallery
Sometime around 1970, feminist historians began to make all sorts of discoveries about the primacy of artistic and scientific discoveries during what has been called the Enlightenment. Among these was the realization that, just as artists often perform the difficult early stages of gentrification of urban areas, only […]
Signs of a Deep Connection: NOW ID Brings Tonal Caress to the UMFA’s Great Hall
It occurred to Gary Vlasic to involve Deaf sign-language poet Walter Kadiki in a performance. And NOW-ID choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen took his idea (with his permission) and ran with it. (After all, he’s on her board.) As a result, we have “A Tonal Caress” running July12-14 at the […]
