Les RokaLes Roka

I am a native of Toledo, Ohio, having received my Ph.D. in journalism and mass communication from Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism in 2002. In addition to teaching at Utah State University and the University of Utah, I have worked extensively in public relations for a variety of organizations including a major metropolitan university, college of osteopathic medicine, and community college. When it comes to intellectual curiosity, I venture into as many areas as possible, whether it’s about music criticism, the history of journalism, the practice of public relations in a Web 2.0 world and the soon-to-arrive Web 3.0 landscape, or how public debates are formed about many issues especially in the political arena. As a Salt Lake City resident, I currently write and edit a blog called The Selective Echo that provides an entertaining, informative, and provocative look at Salt Lake City and its cosmopolitan best. I also have been the U.S. editorial advisor for an online publication Art Design Publicity based in The Netherlands. And, I use social media tools such as Twitter for blogging, networking with journalists and experts, and staying current on the latest trends in culture and news. I also have been a regular monthly contributor to a Utah business magazine, and I have recently conducted a variety of editing projects involving authors and researchers throughout the country and the world, including Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Lebanon, Cyprus, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. I’m also a classically trained musician who spent more than 15 years in a string quartet, being involved in more than 400 performances.

Utah Film Center Damn These Heels 2020: 17th annual queer film festival may be virtual but slate packed with 23 international films, 4 shorts programs, special events including drive-in experience

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review is providing daily coverage of the Utah Film Center’s 17th annual Damn These Heels Queer Film Festival. Follow daily for feature reviews of the 2020 slate during the festival. One of Utah Film Center’s signature centerpieces is moving to a virtual platform this year with its well-established brand of exceptional … Read more

Fight for public lands: Public Trust documentary to be screened by Utah Film Center, featuring director David Byars in talkback with KUER-FM RadioWest’s Doug Fabrizio

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The absorbing, intricately structured documentary Public Trust opens with a majestic, joyous montage of America’s public lands, accompanied by stirring orchestral music and narrated by journalist Hal Herring. However, the film quickly segues into the public land debates, which are anything but majestic or joyous. These lands, Herring says, are as quintessential to the American … Read more

Utah Film Center sets livestream event featuring BOSS: The Black Experience in Business documentary; panel with Utah Juneteenth Freedom and Heritage

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A significant epiphany in the exceptional documentary BOSS: The Black Experience in Business is how director Stanley Nelson chronicles everything that Black entrepreneurship has come up against through more than three centuries of history, yet still achieving many of American business’ greatest innovations. Absorbing, lucid and never overwhelming, this exquisitely synthesized case of history, which … Read more

SONDERimmersive’s Through Yonder Window transforms parking garage row at The Gateway into Fair Verona from Shakespearean classic

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From teachers to stage producers and to filmmakers and artists, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been taken up as a fervent challenge to make one of the western canon’s most familiar stories relevant, meaningful and fresh to contemporary audiences. In SONDERimmersive’s new Through Yonder Window production, staged in a row on the upper deck of … Read more

Utah Film Center’s livestream of What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael will feature talkback with director Rob Garver, Time film critic Stephanie Zacharek

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Film critic Pauline Kael emerged during one of Hollywood’s most significant transitional periods of The New Hollywood, followed almost immediately by the first wave of modern blockbusters. Of Jaws, she called it “the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made… [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it’s … Read more

Utah Arts Festival launches virtual platform of Festival Vibes Fridays today for the month of June

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Normally for four days in June, Library Square and the surrounding civic campus in downtown Salt Lake City are transformed into a village of arts and culture for the Utah Arts Festival (UAF), the state’s largest multi-disciplinary gathering of its kind, drawing between 70,000 and 80,000 visitors annually. Despite the inevitable decision in March to … Read more

Expanding the theatrical library during the pandemic: Plan-B Theatre adds 7 short plays from Utah theatrical artists of color to the national Play At Home initiative; its free, public app

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One of the most formidable challenges in the COVID-19 pandemic, where live productions have ground to a near-complete standstill, is to keep the engine of creating new work going, especially when it still is unclear when the performing arts will return to an appreciable state of producing work. One national project has been the #PlayAtHome … Read more

Revisiting the Malheur occupation: Utah Film Center sets livestream event with No Man’s Land documentary

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published June 1 but as the Utah Film Center has rescheduled the livestream event of this documentary to June 23 at 7 p.m., The Utah Review is republishing this feature review today. Viewers also should take note that another film by the same director (David Garrett Byars), the 2020 … Read more

Salt Lake City Public Library’s all-digital Super Summer Challenge reading program set to launch June 1

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Mark Alvarez, an immigration attorney who also has written for various publications on many subjects along with radio and television appearances, provides the Spanish translation of this article, as presented below the English language version of this feature. Perhaps there are no better places than libraries to experience magic—for example, in fairy tales, mythology … Read more

Utah Film Center sets livestream event of Motherload documentary celebrating mothers, cargo bikes, cycling culture; talkback featuring Bike Utah, Bicycle Collective

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If there is at least one good metric coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the trend of bicycle trips. BikeUtah.org, citing data from the Utah Department of Transportation and Strava Metro, reported that the number of bicycle trips in April more than doubled those in March in the state. While the data represents a … Read more