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
The art of poetry slams has enjoyed a solid base of popularity at the Utah Arts Festival and its strength has followed the growth of the literary art form. Many of the individuals who will be competing in the qualifying individual rounds (June 23) and then in the finals (June 26) epitomize the growth of … Read more
Each year, the Utah Arts Festival is the most effective barometer of the strength, impact and potential of arts in the state. At 40, the festival is really a cosmopolitan miniature city in which more than 80,000 people will sample from the largest slate of programming, artists and performers ever presented at one time in … Read more
Early in her novel Alibi Creek, Bev Magennis, succinctly sets the place of her story: Tucked in a fold of the Mariposa Mountains, Brand had been overrun by unfamiliar faces, the locals showing their disapproval by shunning greetings, refusing to indulge in small talk, and forgetting names. Walker, however, saw this small, steady influx of … Read more
There was a lot to celebrate in 2015 with the Utah Enlightenment, a creative movement where courage defines some of the state’s most interesting and independent artists. Indeed, the Enlightenment disturbs and disrupts the peculiar Utah penchant to be civil and docile or to be content with platitudes and pleasantries. Artists are reclaiming Utah’s unique … Read more
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