In his marvelous short story American Trinity, David Pace brings to life the religious Mormon legend of the Three Nephites, an apocryphal tradition about ancient disciples whom LDS members claim have interceded and helped them in various situations. The scribe, Zedekiah, is debating a fellow disciple about their spiritual calling and the power of telling … Read more
In its fiction releases, Torrey House Press has reconnected science to emotion and humans to their fellow animals in marvelous ways that are captivating readers and capturing awards. And, as it has expanded its nonfiction offerings, the Utah-based publisher has followed a similar course. Recent nonfiction releases such as Wild Rides and Wildflowers by Scott … Read more
Y not you, why can’t I—you in this city at closing hour, this strange going improvised ravine, summer rain among the living. Y not towards your story, green indecipherable shadows, faces I want would, longing, to cathedral— Y not two voices that diminuendo, the point at which what is revealed, is what leaves— Sean Thomas … Read more
Last February at The Leonardo for its second “lovingly competitive storytelling night,” as Giuliana Serena describes it, The Bee: True Stories from The Hive asked participants to tell stories on the theme of attachment. As customary, Serena and her co-founder, Francesca Rosa, set the contours for the theme broadly, and some stories certainly were reflecting … Read more
The Italian novelist Elena Ferrante thinks of literary tradition “as a single, large depository, where anyone who wants to write goes to choose what is useful” to her, and that every ambitious writer has the duty to immerse herself in “a vast literary culture.” For this year’s Utah Arts Festival, organizers of the Literary Arts … Read more
More than two decades after Wallace Stegner, the dean of Western writers, died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a new generation of writers has emerged to empower the voices of activism and advocacy in conservation and preservation, especially through the intellectual and cultural forces of literary fiction. However, these new authors also take on equally … Read more
carry my message. carry my hope. carry its meaning. carry it home. carry my depression. carry disconnection. take this suspension. carry the clone. hop in my step. camera in my bag. calm in my soul. pen in my hand. ‘Pen In My Hand’ – Parallax song from the demo ‘Landlocked,’ lyrics by Blake Donner (c. … Read more
It is inexplicable how some of the most gifted, passionate and prescient pioneers of form, expression, and ideals in the arts and letters world languish in obscurity before someone rediscovers and revives their work, which often is more relevant now than during the period in which it was created. The words of a nearly forgotten … Read more
Sometime after the composer John Luther Adams moved to Alaska, as he has described it, to “get away from the world” and “to help save the wilderness,” he realized that his art of music matters as much as any familiar forms of activism. He wrote, “Art is slow. And it often begins in solitude. In … Read more
Note: This post is by Mark Alvarez, a Salt Lake City lawyer, immigration specialist for Telemundo Utah and host of the ‘Sin Rodeos’ radio show. He also was a member of the Salt Lake City Public Library board from 2009 to 2012. “Fizz! Boom! Read!” is the summer reading program for children in libraries across … Read more