Description

Cowboy-trodden myths of the “Old West” have historically obscured or censored many voices, and continue to shape our ideas of what—and who—a New West should look like and include. Novelists Karin Anderson (Before Us Like a Land of Dreams) and Rebecca Claren (Kickdown) bring their characters to life in a discussion on challenging dominant narratives through their writing. Moderated by Kirsten Johanna Allen, their conversation will be in the Whiting Room of the Hunter Conference Center at SUU on Tuesday, October 29 at 11:30 a.m.

A gardener, writer, mother, wanderer, and heretic, Karin Anderson is a Professor of English at Utah Valley University where she focuses on creative writing, lit theory, wilderness and environmental writing, LGBTQ lit, contemporary narrative genres, and honor legacies. She is the author of the novel Before Us Like a Land of Dreams, and her work has appeared in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Quarter After Eight, Western Humanities Review, Sunstone, Saranac Review, American Literary Review, and Fiddleblack. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and holds degrees from Utah State University, Brigham Young University, and the University of Utah. She hails from the Great Basin.

Award-winning journalist Rebecca Clarren has been writing about the rural West for twenty years. Her journalism, for which she has won the Hillman Prize, an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and nine grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, has appeared in such publications as MotherJones, High Country News, The Nation, and Salon.com. Her debut novel, Kickdown (Sky Horse Press, 2018), was shortlisted for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two young sons.

This event is presented by Torrey House Press and Utah Humanities. This event has received funding from the Utah Humanities Council. The Utah Humanities Council (UHC) enriches our cultural, intellectual, and civic life by providing opportunities for all Utahns to explore life’s most engaging questions and the wonders of the human experience. Torrey House Press is also supported by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums, with funding from the State of Utah and National Endowment for the Arts.