Poems by Rose
if you touch the roof of my mouth with your finger tip you could win a prize
granted, it would just be another lie
like the time I told you my tongue would cure your headache
or that time you said I was kind
Tara Westover’s “Educated” Wins the 15 Bytes Book Award for Creative Nonfiction
New York City-based author Tara Westover has been awarded the 15 Bytes Book Award for creative nonfiction for her memoir Educated, published by Random House. She received her bachelor’s from Brigham Young University. Our jurors wrote of the book: Born from torn metal, broken glass, and gasoline in […]
Tara Westover’s “Educated” is a Must-Read of a Reality Lesson
Educated is a marvel of a book, somehow thoroughly spirit-lifting despite being a fractured fairy tale of Beauty and the Beasts with dark purple bruises and broken bones and shattered hearts and minds and no real happily ever after for our Beauty; just life as we live it, […]
Maximilian Werner’s “The Bone Pile” is a Daring Drift into Understanding
In what may be the keystone essay of his 2018 collection, The Bone Pile: Essays on Nature and Culture, Maximilian Werner asks a crucial question: “What is the purpose of listening?” The essay is entitled “Environmentalist,” and it is a musing on the unfortunate labeling that adheres to this […]
Erica Soon Olsen: Indian Wars Refought
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 Erica Soon Olsen. Olsen was born in Hollywood, California. A graduate of the University of Montana MFA program, she is the author of Recapture & Other Stories, […]
Works by Tessa Fontaine, Katharine Coles and Tara Westover are Finalists for the 15 Bytes Book Award for Creative Nonfiction
Artists of Utah is excited to announce the finalists for this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. 2019 marks the 7th year for this annual award, given to recognize excellence in publishing for books written by a Utah author or with a Utah connection. We received […]
The Simple Pleasures of Indecipherable Magic in Janalyn Guo’s “Our Colony Beyond the City of Ruins”
There’s an impending sense of madness in Janalyn Guo’s collection of short stories Our Colony Beyond the City of Ruins. The quick movement between each story, and between imagery and action within each, feels at times like the manic switching of cable box channels or the incessant swiping […]
Rob Carney’s The Book of Sharks Wins the 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry
Salt Lake City poet Rob Carney has been awarded the 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry for his collection The Book of Sharks from Black Lawrence Press. Originally from Washington state, Carney is the author of four previous collections, including 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press 2015), which was named a finalist for […]
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.
Works by Tacey M. Atsitty, Lance Larsen and Rob Carney are Finalists for the 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry
Artists of Utah is excited to announce the finalists for this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry. 2019 marks the 7th year for this annual award, given to recognize excellence in publishing for books written by a Utah author or with a Utah connection. We received a […]
James McLaughlin Wins 15 Bytes Book Award for Fiction
James McLaughlin has been awarded this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award for Fiction for his debut novel Bearskin, published by Ecco. James McLaughlin holds law and MFA degrees from the University of Virginia. He grew up in the mountains of Virginia and now lives in the Wasatch Range east […]
Works by Michael Mejia, James McLaughlin and George B. Handley are Finalists for the 15 Bytes Book Award for Fiction
Artists of Utah is excited to announce the finalists for this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award for Fiction. 2019 marks the 7th year for this annual award, given to recognize excellence in publishing for books written by a Utah author or with a Utah connection. We received a […]
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 […]
Paint Your Wagon Utah-style: John Bennion’s Ezekiel’s Third Wife
In the tiny pioneer outpost of Vernon, Utah in the West Desert south of Tooele author John Bennion was born and raised. Little has changed there since the time this fiction writer and professor of English at Brigham Young University lived there in the ’40s and ’50 and […]
Karin Anderson’s “Before Us Like a Land of Dreams”
If you’ve ever said to yourself, “I wish Faulkner had lived and anxiously dreamed and feverously wrote his visions from the Utah/Mountain/Desert / Mormon/West” (instead of the South) then Before Us Like a Land of Dreams (Torrey House Press) by Karin Anderson is what you’ve been waiting for. Trailing a […]
“A package held so firmly closed by pride and practicality”: Klancy de Never’s “Lessons in Printing”
“If a piece of paper gets into my house for a day, I’ll save it forever,” writes Klancy Clark de Nevers, oblivious of Marie Kondo’s warning about papers: “they will never inspire joy, no matter how carefully you keep them.” For de Nevers, these boxes of family ephemera […]
Brian Staker
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 Brian Staker, who received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Utah in 1993. Since then, his poems have appeared in numerous literary publications, […]
James Swensen Wins the 15 Bytes Book Award for Art Book
James Swensen has been awarded this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award in the Art Book category for his scholarly publication In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954, published by University of Utah Press. “Swensen’s book is a fascinating and detailed look […]
Books by James Swensen, Joshua Rivkin and Bolton Colburn Finalists for 15 Bytes Book Award for Art Book
Artists of Utah is excited to announce the finalists for this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award in the Art Book category. 2019 marks the 7th year for this annual award, given to recognize excellence in publishing for art books written by a Utah author or with a Utah […]
