Stories of Land, Sky, and Self: Presenting the Finalists for 15 Bytes’ 2025 Creative Nonfiction Awards

By 15 Bytes on November 29, 2025 • ( Leave a comment )

15 Bytes is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2025 15 Bytes Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Presented annually since 2013 by Artists of Utah, the award recognizes outstanding literary achievement by Utah writers or works with significant connections to the state published in the previous year. This year’s finalists showcase the breadth of contemporary nonfiction—from urgent environmental reportage to celestial inquiry to powerful personal narrative—reflecting the craft, curiosity, and vision that define the literary culture of the region. We congratulate the finalists and celebrate their contributions to the arts in Utah and beyond. The winner will be announced in mid December.

Life After Dead Pool by Zak Podmore — In this lucid and deeply reported work published by Torrey House Press, Zak Podmore investigates the dramatic decline of Lake Powell and the unfolding environmental, political, and cultural consequences of the reservoir’s approach toward “dead-pool” status. Blending river travel narrative, ecological observation, and clear-eyed policy analysis, Podmore documents not only the stresses placed on the Colorado River system but also the surprising signs of renewal emerging from Glen Canyon as its long-submerged landscapes and habitats return to the light. Life After Dead Pool offers a rare combination of urgency and hope, inviting readers to reckon with the West’s water crisis while imagining more resilient ways forward.

Zak Podmore is a Utah-based writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on the Colorado River Basin, public lands, and the intersecting environmental and social issues of the American West. A former editor and columnist covering environmental policy and Indigenous affairs, he is also the author of Confluence, a memoir-journalism hybrid about rivers, grief, and restoration.

Still As Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon, from Antiquity to Tomorrow by Christopher Cokinos — In this richly woven work published by Simon & Schuster, Cokinos traces humanity’s evolving relationship with the Moon across millennia — from ancient myths and early telescopic observations to 19th-century “selenographers,” through the Apollo missions and into the present-day Artemis era. Blending cultural history, astronomy, memoir, and poetic reflection, he not only charts the Moon’s scientific and symbolic history but also threads throughout his own lifelong relationship to night skies and stargazing.

Christopher Cokinos is an American poet and nonfiction writer whose essays and books explore nature, environment, and space. Originally from Indianapolis, he holds degrees from Indiana University and Washington University and has taught literature and science writing at several universities. Cokinos has long lived and written in Utah — including time teaching at Utah State University, where he founded and edited the journal Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing, and now continues to split his time between northern Utah and other locales.

Never Leave the Dogs Behind: A Memoir by Brianna Madia — In this raw, unflinching memoir published by HarperCollins, Madia recounts her decision to leave behind the expectations of conventional life and retreat into the stark beauty of the Utah desert — accompanied only by her pack of four dogs. In the wake of a painful divorce and public scrutiny, she moves into a stripped-down trailer on a remote, undeveloped parcel outside Moab and confronts grief, isolation, depression, and the ghosts of her past. Through the eyes of her canine companions and the rhythms of desert living, Never Leave the Dogs Behind becomes a powerful story of survival, reclaiming agency, and rediscovering identity amid unrelenting solitude and hardship.