Articles on Utah literary arts, Utah authors, Utah literature and poetry published in 15 Bytes.
Michael Lavers, After Earth, University of Tampa Press If much of contemporary poetry is like a museum full of Rothko paintings, then Michael Lavers is walking in and hanging up a Renaissance painting. If it’s like an aviary, then Lavers’ book After Earth is more like a woodpecker across the […]
The twenty-first century’s first pandemic is in full swing when I video conference with Nan Seymour. We were scheduled to meet in person but, after possible exposure to Covid-19, I am under self-quarantine while awaiting test results. In 2015, Seymour founded River Writing — a Salt Lake City-based collective […]
Bob Rees is Director of Mormon Studies and Visiting Professor at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies in the Baltics. His writing has appeared in local, national, and international publications.
Love and beauty are prominent themes in Aşık’s work, which he describes as “ordered by the soul.” This installment of READ Local First includes three poems in Turkish with the poet’s English translations.
An Unremarkable Girl is a mother/daughter memoir by Nan Seymour and Beatrice Washburn. The book tells the story of Beatrice, a transgender girl from Utah, who survives the perils of a misgendered adolescence… to become herself.
Jeri Parker once said that she built her summer cabin on family land in Idaho, but it never registered that she meant this literally: hammer in hand, from floorboards to ceiling joists. She even dug in the waterline. And in her captivating new memoir, My Seasons of Wilderness, the Salt […]
Welcome to this month’s edition of READ LOCAL First: Utah’s most comprehensive collection of accomplished poets and authors. This month we introduce you to deaf, genderqueer poet Meg Day. Day is the author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street, 2014), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award, and a finalist […]
During the time of Shakespeare, church leaders likened cats to witches. Rebecca Pyle: “With less cats came more rats, more fleas, more people infected too: black plague.”
In these times of isolation, we may find ourselves paying more attention to the particularities of things. Rather than witnessing life at the rate of a moving car, we find ourselves stationary, with the time to see — possibly anew — the things around us. In this, we […]
When I think of the dead, it means they’re thinking of me … Cheering or haunting, depending on your perspective, are these opening lines from Marianne Boruch’s “The No-Name Tapestries,” a work Natasha Sajé chose to read for us in honor of National Poetry Month. Sajé, a professor […]
… Mutter all you want: in this You are different from nobody, even in your feeling Alone at night when darkness brings itself down And all you find gazing out from where you are is light Blazing the house across the way, where you imagine Neighbors you haven’t […]
“Poetry is about trying to re-create an experience that, technically, can never happen again,” Trish Hopkinson said in our profile of the poet, blogger and literary arts advocate in April, 2019. “It’s specific to the poet or the character they’re writing through.” You can find Hopkinson’s work online […]
In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve asked poets in our state to read from their own work as well as from the work of a poet they admire. Rob Carney is the author of six books and three chapbooks of poems, most recently Facts and Figures (2020). […]
Utah native Julie Turley is quarantining in Brooklyn, New York. She’s a writer and librarian. The 15 Bytes editorial staff extends its well wishes to Julie, as well all artists, writers, and residents in Manhattan—the epicenter of our country’s coronavirus outbreak. The photograph pictured here was taken in Utah prior to the pandemic.
David Lee, the first Poet Laureate of Utah and a retired professor of English literature, has published over 20 books of poetry, two of which have been nominated for a Pulitzer and one for the National Book Award. His newest collection of poetry, Mine Tailings, is a dynamic […]
Recently, Shauna Brock read her short story, Eskhára, to a crowd at Finch Lane Gallery. The event was part of our READ LOCAL Onsite series. Now, READ LOCAL First brings you the story in print.
For this episode of the podcast, we bring you a recording of our READ LOCAL Onsite event held at Finch Lane Gallery Thursday, Feb. 27. The evening brought together Salt Lake City writers Shauna Brock and Ranjan Adiga, who read from their works, followed by a discussion that […]
“Nothing gets to stay what it is for very long,” says Cori A. Winrock, describing the transience of the world that surrounds us, just one of the many themes addressed in her new book of lyrical poetry Little Envelope of Earth Conditions. “Heirlooms, spacesuits, an ambulance; objects are […]
Ranjan Adiga, a fiction writer, creative nonfiction writer, and Associate Professor at Westminster College. He grew up in Nepal and writes in English as a second language. His short fiction focuses on South Asian immigrants — among the fastest growing communities in the United States but underrepresented in media and literature. Among other publications, his stories and articles have appeared in Story Quarterly, Belmont Review, Salt Lake Tribune, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2017, his short story “Bombay Curry Kitchen” took second place in the 60th Annual Utah Original Writing Competition. Today’s publication is a personal essay.
