{"id":100409,"date":"2025-12-19T19:32:54","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T02:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=100409"},"modified":"2026-01-01T10:35:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T17:35:42","slug":"david-kranes-prolific-utah-author-playwright-and-teacher-dies-at-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/david-kranes-prolific-utah-author-playwright-and-teacher-dies-at-87\/","title":{"rendered":"David Kranes, Prolific Utah Author, Playwright, and Teacher, Dies at 87"},"content":{"rendered":"
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David Kranes, 2013. Image by Shawn Rossiter.<\/p><\/div>\n

David Kranes, the prolific Utah author, playwright, teacher, and longtime director of the Sundance Playwrights Lab, has died at 87. He was a fiercely imaginative writer whose work ranged across fiction, theater, film, opera, and even casino design\u2014an eclectic span that reflected a mind always in motion.<\/h4>\n

Kranes arrived in Utah in 1967 from New England to teach in the University of Utah\u2019s Creative Writing Program, where he became a formative mentor for generations of writers, including Ron Carlson, Pam Houston, Jeff Metcalf, and Rolf Yngve. Although he spent more than thirty years at the university, the classroom was only one of his stages. Over the course of his career, he wrote approximately 50 plays, eight novels, and three collections of short stories, as well as essays and commentary pieces. His short-story collections included The Legend\u2019s Daughter<\/em> and Low Time in the Desert: Nevada Stories<\/em>. His 2001 novel The National Tree<\/em> was adapted into a 2009 Hallmark Channel film.<\/h4>\n

A hallmark of Kranes\u2019 writing\u2014and his life\u2014was his fascination with landscapes both literal and psychological. Whether charting the austere beauty of the Mountain West or the neon-saturated hyperreality of Las Vegas, he explored how environments shape desire, loneliness, and reinvention. He was, as Knopf editor Gordon Lish once wrote, a \u201cpoet of dread,\u201d who rendered America as Americans know it but rarely articulate.<\/h4>\n

His curiosity led him far beyond the page. Kranes was a noted expert in casino culture and design, a columnist for Casino Executive Magazine, and an avid blackjack card counter who was occasionally asked by casino staff to step away from the table. He famously described casinos as \u201cfilled with compressed drama,\u201d a phrase that could just as easily apply to his own dramatic works. His 1989 Salt Lake Acting Company production 1102, 1103 set its action in neighboring Las Vegas hotel rooms\u2014liminal spaces where chance, identity, and spectacle collide.<\/h4>\n

As Artistic Director of the Sundance Playwrights Lab for fourteen years, Kranes helped shape a crucible of innovation that nurtured writers such as Don DeLillo, Donald Margulies, and Jim Lehrer. Under his tenure, works like Tony Kushner\u2019s Angels in America<\/em> and The Kentucky Cycle<\/em> took early steps toward becoming landmark pieces of American theater. Kranes thrived in collaborative environments, believing deeply in process: \u201cThe more ways you can impact the work and let the pieces float around in the solution,\u201d he said in a 2013 interview with David Pace<\/a>, \u201cthe more possibility it will reconfigure in powerful ways.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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Kranes’ Salt Lake City home, designed by Ron Molen.<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite his achievements, Kranes remained modest, even bemused, by moments of mainstream attention\u2014such as when his novel The National Tree<\/em> was adapted into a Hallmark Channel film. Fame was never his pursuit; inquiry was. His obsessions drifted between architecture, ecology, theology, and phenomenology, each feeding into his expansive sense of storytelling.<\/h4>\n
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David Kranes in his Salt Lake City home, 2013. Image by Shawn Rossiter.<\/p><\/div>\n

Friends and colleagues often described him as \u201calways in process,\u201d a phrase that suited both his artistic philosophy and his personal restlessness. Even in his eighties he continued drafting new novels, rediscovering old manuscripts, and reimagining past works. He was the sort of writer who believed no story is ever entirely finished, only paused until a new understanding arrives. His last novel, Family Matters<\/em>, was released shortly before his death, and another, Think of Me As Water<\/em>, will be published posthumously.<\/h4>\n

Kranes is survived by his wife, Carol; two sons, Jon and Michael; two grandchildren, Sidney and Ceccelia; and a sister, Nancy. His ashes will be scattered in parts of Idaho, a landscape that shaped and inspired some of his most enduring work.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Kranes, the prolific Utah author, playwright, teacher, and longtime director of the Sundance Playwrights Lab, has died at 87. He was a fiercely imaginative writer whose work ranged across fiction, theater, film, opera, and even casino design\u2014an eclectic span that reflected a mind always in motion. Kranes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[1408],"class_list":["post-100409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","tag-david-kranes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-20-at-4.39.17-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 14:35:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100417,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100409\/revisions\/100417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}