This is How They Burn You
This is How They Burn You is short, concise, and dark in the manner of all great dystopian literature.
David Kranes’ “The Hunting Years”
In 1951, Ernest Hemingway began an adventure story by disguising himself as a painter. Islands in the Stream wasn’t finished (or titled that) until 1971, a decade after Hemingway’s suicide. It wasn’t one of his small handful of good books, though the film — in which the painter […]
Katharine Coles’ “The Stranger I Become” is Poetry in Motion
A poet came to my door the other day, “as poets are wont to do,” quipped a friend on hearing of it. The poet who knocked, Katherine Indermauer, has published a fine chapbook, Facing the Mirror, that I wanted after reading a vibrant review in 15 Bytes by Rebecca Pyle, a […]
Alchemic-like: 16 Ways to Look at Transformation
The award-winning writer and photographer Andrew Romriell writes about queerness, religion, body image, gender identity, and sexuality. Here we present his Alchemic-like: 16 Ways to Look at Transformation.
Taking a Leap into the Unknown with Terry Tempest Williams
“This is not safe,” is a caution we should attend to, but might feel we can overlook. “This is not safe, and it can’t be made safe” is another matter. A threat that cannot be neutralized is a threat indeed. In 1940, during the lull in the storm […]
Streamsong by Natalie Hopkins
Welcome to our August installment of READ LOCAL First—the world’s most extensive repository of Utah-related poets and writers. Today, we are proud to introduce creative nonfiction writer Natalie Hopkins. Originally from Florida, Hopkins now lives in Utah Valley. She fell in love with creative nonfiction while studying for […]
Thayer’s Coming-of-Age “Summer Fire” Grows Old
Sometime in the 1980s, an edition of Douglas H. Thayer’s Summer Fire was published bearing a jacket blurb, written by Orson Scott Card, reading, “I have never read a better Mormon novel.” His calling it a “Mormon novel” makes Summer Fire a problem for a critic like me, […]
The Dazzling Wonder: Katherine Indermauer’s Chapbook “Facing the Mirror”
Face it, Katherine Indermauer’s chapbook Facing the Mirror says: since mirrors arrived, people, and our world, have never been the same. So powerful are mirrors, says this small spell of a book — an essay which also has, mildly, sometimes, the feel of a scientific/alchemic journal – that […]
The Only Truth in the World
Welcome to our Independence Day issue of READ LOCAL First, our monthly celebration of Utah-related poets and writers. Today, we proudly introduce Jeremy Spencer Rees. Rees, a Texas native, recently finished his undergraduate degree in Utah. In the final year of his undergrad he was awarded second place […]
Margaret Blair Young’s “Heresies of Nature”
Heresies of Nature, Margaret Blair Young’s 2002 novel about a Mormon family gripped by a chronic, unpredictable illness, begins with a bit of authorial slight-of-hand. A narrator’s voice and an author’s voice are easy to confuse, and Young takes advantage of it by starting out as herself, speaking […]
Three Pieces by Poet Britt Allen
From everyone here at 15 Bytes: Happy LGBTQ+ Pride Month and welcome to our June installment of READ LOCAL First — the world’s most extensive repository of Utah-related poets and writers. Today, we are proud to introduce award-winning poet Britt Allen. In May of 2020, Allen completed her Master […]
Making Sense From Scratch: Francois Camoin’s “Deadly Virtues”
“He could have been almost anything he wanted, but he chose to be a bad artist. Nobody will ever know why.” The “bad artist” that Buckdancer Skinner refers to here was his father, Adam Skinner, whose disappearance and possible demise reunites his three sons, 33 year-old Jacob, 27 […]