Articles on Utah literary arts, Utah authors, Utah literature and poetry published in 15 Bytes.
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. […]
For today’s installment of READ LOCAL SUNDAY we feature Kamas-based author and editor Barbara Richardson, winner of the 15 Bytes inaugural Book Award in fiction for her novel Tributary. Most recently the editor of a collection of essays by environmental writers on the subject of “dirt,” she returns here to fiction with this excerpt […]
Moth & Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death, put together by Sunstone editor Stephen Carter, contains 46 chapters that range from as short as one page to as many as 20. There’s poetry, fiction, memoir, sermon, meditation, drama, prose poem, and illustration. The tone modulates through humorous, to mournful, to sentimental, to […]
In my youth, as with many young men, I spent my fair share of sleepless days in Las Vegas with neon nights spent stumping up and down the Strip, slipping into gentlemen’s clubs, and eating hot wings in dark and dubious off-the-Strip hovels that passed as restaurants.I saw […]
There’s a statue of Scott Abbott on the campus of Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem. It shows a tall, handsome guy, button-down shirt, belted and tucked into jeans falling to a sensible length above dark loafers. Like this representation, Scott Abbott’s demeanor is stoic and thoughtful. His […]
For today’s installment of READ LOCAL SUNDAY we feature Salt Lake City-based Matthew Ivan Bennett, resident playwright at Plan-B Theatre Company, listed by American Theater magazine as one of 14 companies nationwide exemplifying social action and civic engagement. A fixture in the local theater scene and beyond, Bennett is currently working on a new […]
For today’s installment of READ LOCAL SUNDAY we feature Springville-based fiction writer Akramah Cofie. His novel-in-progress, “A Fortnight in ’79,” tells the story of Emilia, a woman who refuses to let die her dream of getting an education. It also gives a glimpse of Ghana, in the latter part of […]
Photo of Paisley Rekdal by Austen Diamond If the Three Tenors can draw stadium-size crowds, why not poets? Asphodel, That Greeny Flower by Williams Carlos Williams (d. 1963) is an institutionally well-established poem among writers, coffee shop patrons, bar flies and academics. The modernist love poem discovers a certitude so […]
Brad Roghaar at the 2016 Ogden City Mayor’s Awards in the Arts. Courtesy Ogden City. A year ago, in early November, poet Brad Roghaar opened the Ogden Mayor’s Awards in the Arts by reading one of his works about a city at the confluence of two rivers. His […]
Reviewed by Lis Pankl Trish Hopkinson’s most recent volume of poetry, Footnote, is a deeply personal tribute to her favorite poems, prose, music, and films. She takes references from these works throughout to extrapolate into her own subject, often responding to the creator of the text or to the […]
