There were many fine moments this year for the Utah Enlightenment. In compiling the list of what I believe were the 10 best defining moments of Utah’s cultural awakening for 2016, the pool of choices was more than satisfying in breadth and depth. There has been a great deal of recent press, for example, about … Read more
In different ways, two recently published novels solidly critique the American West culture that simultaneously purports to elevate history while stubbornly clinging to the convenience of historical forgetfulness. In both novels – Inhabited by Charlie Quimby (Torrey House Press) and Man in the Mirror: A man finding himself as he loses himself to Alzheimer’s by … Read more
We were the land’s before we were. Or the land was ours before you were a land. Or this land was our land, it was not your land. We were the land before we were people, loamy roamers rising, so the stories go, or formed of clay, spit into with breath reeking soul— Heid Erdrich, … 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
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
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
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
By just mentioning death camas (a plant known very well especially by Western sheep ranchers) in their new book ‘Wild Rides and Wildflowers,’ two Utah Valley University scholars lead readers to several epiphanies, as they recount four years of press columns they wrote about riding the Great Western Trail on Mount Timpanogos. The plant becomes … Read more