utah arts festival literary arts

Utah Arts Festival 2021: Literary Arts program, now in its 27th year, adds new features including BIPOC literary program, readings by college student writers, performances at three stages

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EDITOR’S NOTE: To read more about some highlights of this year’s Utah Arts Festival literary arts program, see the features about the BIPOC literary program here, A. M. Luzzader and Chadd VanZanten here, Danielle Susi and the SLCC student writers here and the indie and team poetry slams here.  Now in its 27th year at … Read more

Utah Arts Festival 2021: Slimmer, shorter but still state’s most comprehensive arts and cultural celebration of the year

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review begins its preview coverage today of the 45th Utah Arts Festival, which will be held Aug. 27-29 (noon to 11 p.m. on Aug. 27 and 28 and noon to 9 p.m. on Aug. 29) on the Library Square in downtown Salt Lake City. As this is the state’s largest multidisciplinary … Read more

Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2017: Literary Arts venue highlights exhilarating changes in the landscape of letters

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The ways we read, hear, absorb and consume literature continue to morph through a messy yet exhilarating chaos. The prior autocratic tendencies of the literary world are giving way to a formidable enlightenment in which new voices and forms have reinvigorated the essence and urgency of memorable story telling. This year’s Literary Arts program, the … Read more

Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2017: Jeremy Lee Sanchez finds deaf culture’s artistic power in signed poetry

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In a video of just under a minute and 15 seconds, Jeremy Lee Sanchez performs a visual vernacular of his favorite film, The Matrix (1999). It is impressive in its compact richness of conveying the film’s story line as a signed literary work that combines many elements of body movements, iconic signs, gestures and facial … Read more

Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2016: Literary Arts venue – relevant, human, powerful, voluminous

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As a Ball State University student in Muncie, Matt Hart, then the frontman for a punk band, decided to take a poetry workshop, as he describes it, “on a lark.” The experience changed his life. “Up until then, my only experience with poetry was negative. I always had thought of poetry with its gaudy, flowery … Read more

Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2016: A closer look at some of the nationally known Literary Arts performers, poets, songwriters

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This year’s Literary Arts venue at the 40th annual Utah Arts Festival brings numerous literary figures from the country in a series of performances slated for The Big Mouth Stage. The Utah Review had the gracious honor of interviewing several who will be appearing as part of the largest program offering ever at the festival’s … Read more