10:30-11:30 a.m.
Auditorium
Gary Soto in conversation with Joel Long
Gary Soto is an award-winning author, whose work includes eleven poetry collections for adults, picture books for children, and books for teens. His dedication to service and advocacy for reading has garnered him many awards, including NBC’s Person of the Week in 1997 and the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation in 1999.
Join Soto as he converses with Utah poet Joel Long on the topic of "Local News: the Writing Life of Gary Soto.” Soto’s engaging talk is based on the idea that literature (often the most authentic) is regional in feel and that the author should know/have lived what he or she has written about--or at least to a point. Parallels of other American writers such as Steinbeck, Frost, Cather, will be given as examples of regional feel. Soto will also draw on examples from children’s and young adult books, and engage the audience in a lively question and answer session at the end of the hour.
Sponsors: Utah Council of Teachers of English; Utah Humanities Council
10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Children’s Craft Room
Children’s Bookmaking
Underage bookmakers start from scratch as they create and decorate their own books. Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
Level 1 Fireplace
Book Arts Offerings
Join Book Arts Program staff to learn about and participate in a wide variety of activities!
- Papermaking: Learn how to turn pulp into paper and take home your very own handmade sheet
- Printing: Using a tabletop clamshell press, hand print your very own book festival keepsake
- Bookbinding: Learn from the best as professional bookbinders demonstrate the methods they use in binding books
- Adult Bookmaking: Discover several ways to fashion books and adapt these forms to fit your own creative impulses
Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
12-1 p.m.
Auditorium and Conference Rooms A/B/C
Michael Cunningham with Doug Fabrizio
Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours, will join Radio West host Doug Fabrizio in conversation about his newest bestselling novel, Specimen Days. Cunningham will talk about his extraordinary fiction, and what it was like to create a novel that weaves together ghost stories, the history of the industrial revolution, a frank examination of terrorism, and visions of a post-apocalyptic America in one genre-bending new work.
Sponsors: College of Humanities, Salt Lake City Arts Council, University of Utah; Utah Humanities Council; University of Utah Creative Writing Program; Salt Lake Film Society; University of Utah, English Department; University of Utah, Gender Studies
Children’s Story Room
Cuéntame Cuentos: a Bilingual Storytime hosted by the Utah State Library Division
Come and enjoy fun children's stories and songs in English and Spanish presented by librarians Kristen Stehel and Juan Tomás Lee. Little ones will be able to take home a small craft of their own creation. Kristen Stehel (Librarian, Utah State Library Division) is currently planning the proposed addition of bilingual storytime at the Murray Library. Juan Tomás Lee (Librarian, Utah State Library Division) enjoys the opportunity to read his favorite stories to families and encourage them to enjoy other languages.
Sponsor: Utah State Library Division
Children’s Craft Room
Children’s Bookmaking
Underage bookmakers start from scratch as they create and decorate their own books. Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
Level 1 Fireplace
Book Arts Offerings
Join Book Arts Program staff to learn about and participate in a wide variety of activities!
- Papermaking: Learn how to turn pulp into paper and take home your very own handmade sheet
- Printing: Using a tabletop clamshell press, hand print your very own book festival keepsake
- Bookbinding: Learn from the best as professional bookbinders demonstrate the methods they use in binding books
- Adult Bookmaking: Discover several ways to fashion books and adapt these forms to fit your own creative impulses
Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
1:00-5:00 p.m.
Level 2 Canteena
From A to Z: Make Your Own Altered Book and/or Zine
Make a zine or alter a children's board book into a work of art. This free-form workshop is designed for those who want to spend the afternoon, or just a few minutes exploring the creation of zines or altered books. Basic instructions will be given at the start of the program which will run from 1:00-5:00 p.m. or while supplies last. Books about how to make zines and altered books will also be available in the area for check-out.
Sponsor: The City Library
1:30-2:30 p.m.
Auditorium
Carlotta Walls LaNier in conversation with Reverend France A. Davis, Pastor
Join Carlotta Walls LaNier and Reverend France A. Davis, Pastor, as they
discuss her recent book A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little
Rock Central High School. When fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the
stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and
eight other black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey
of the "Little Rock Nine," as they came to be known, would lead the nation on
an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge
prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change the landscape
of America. Breaking her silence and sharing her story for the first time,
Carlotta Walls has written an inspiring, thoroughly engrossing memoir that is
not only a testament to the power of one to make a difference but also of the
sacrifices made by families and communities that found themselves a part of
history.
Sponsors: The City Library; Utah Humanities Council
Conference Rooms A/B
Mark Richardson in conversation with Guy Lebeda
Join Mark Richardson and Guy Lebeda as they discuss Mark's recent book Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Zen and Now is a vivid chronicle of a journalist's heartfelt and determined journey to reconnect with the beloved American classic, Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. Published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of Pirsig's original trip, Zen and Now is a stirring meditation on a classic work and a passionate inquiry into the lessons it continues to teach us in the complex and bewildering world we inhabit today.
Conference Room C
Beehive Archive: A Conversation About Utah History
L. Jackson Newell will moderate a panel discussion of several of the books that have changed the way we think about Utah history. Seminal (and sometimes controversial), these works have helped generate new interest in and approaches to our state’s past. Topics to be discussed include Utah’s multicultural history, Juanita Brooks’s research on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and nineteenth-century life in the state’s rural communities. Panelists include Kent Powell, Linda King Newell, and Brian Cannon.
Level 2 Canteena
From A to Z: Make Your Own Altered Book and/or Zine
Make a zine or alter a children's board book into a work of art. This free-form workshop is designed for those who want to spend the afternoon, or just a few minutes exploring the creation of zines or altered books. Basic instructions will be given at the start of the program which will run from 1:00-5:00 p.m. or while supplies last. Books about how to make zines and altered books will also be available in the area for check-out.
Sponsor: The City Library
Level 4 Special Collections Room
Rare Book Roadshow
Join antiquarians Ken Sanders and Tony Weller as they reprise their popular Rare Book Roadshow. Bring your rare books, antique maps, vintage photographs, documents or paper ephemera to have evaluated – or just to stump the experts! A treat of a program for those who want to learn the value of their objects and a treat for the audience as they see experts at work.
Level 4 Conference Room
Michael Spooner in conversation with Chris Crowe
In a no holds barred, tell-all cage match, Chris Crowe and Michael Spooner will read from their recent novels, thumb wrestle, and interview each other on subjects of YA fiction, life, writing, and what it was like to grow up barking mad in the 1960s.
Children’s Story Room
Whizgiggle Puppets: Crazy Creature Comedies
Join The City Library's own Whizgiggle Puppets as they present a collection of amusing animal antics including side splitters such as "The Frog Prince, Continued"; "Pssst!"; and everyone's favorite colossal canine, "Dogzilla." Each story showcases a zoologically zany combination of hand and shadow puppetry. Bring the whole family for a rip-roaring, furry fun time and enjoy this encore performance from the March 2009 Puppetry Festival.
Sponsor: The City Library
Children’s Craft Room
Children’s Bookmaking
Underage bookmakers start from scratch as they create and decorate their own books. Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
Level 1 Fireplace
Book Arts Offerings
Join Book Arts Program staff to learn about and participate in a wide variety of activities!
- Papermaking: Learn how to turn pulp into paper and take home your very own handmade sheet
- Printing: Using a tabletop clamshell press, hand print your very own book festival keepsake
- Bookbinding: Learn from the best as professional bookbinders demonstrate the methods they use in binding books
- Adult Bookmaking: Discover several ways to fashion books and adapt these forms to fit your own creative impulses
Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
3-4 p.m.
Auditorium
Jimmy Santiago Baca in conversation with Paisley Rekdal
Jimmy Santiago Baca returns to the Utah Humanities Book Festival as he is joined in conversation with Paisley Rekdal to discuss his recently released first novel, A Glass of Water. This gripping tale of family, loyalty, ambition, and revenge offers us a glimpse into the tragedies unfurling at this very moment at and around our country's borders. Baca and Rekdal will explore his book’s themes of family, immigration, and the twisted paths people take to claim their piece of the ever-elusive American dream. Baca’s poetry has been lauded by many, including Modern American Poetry: “The search for a genuine identity is a common theme in American literature. . . . Baca eloquently and poignantly portrays himself as someone who aches to lead his people to freedom much with the sweeping exuberance of Walt Whitman or dark determination of Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Conference Rooms A/B
The Roots of Humor: Terrell Dougan and Robert Kirby
Where does most humor originate? The horrible truth will unfold as Robert Kirby and Terrell Dougan confess their innermost memories and motivations for writing things that often make people laugh. Robert Kirby, humor columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, and Terrell Dougan, past humor columnist for The Deseret News and author of a new memoir, That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister (Hyperion), are longtime members of a very exclusive book club, The Wish We Were Dead Poets Society, where they became fast friends and have insulted each other as often as possible. Handouts will be given listing Terrell’s favorite humorists. She cannot, ever, vouch for what Kirby will be handing out. Good luck.
Conference Room C
Desolation Canyon and the Tavaputs Plateau: Making a Living for 13,000 Years
Authors James M. Aton, Jerry D. Spangler, and Donna K. Spangler survey the 13,000 year history of human occupation of the Green River through Desolation Canyon and on the Tavaputs Plateau – the subject of their respective books – using color photographs of Dan Miller and of Jerry and Donna Spangler as well as black and white archival images. Although unoccupied now, the Desolation/Tavaputs region was home to many groups of people through time: Fremont Indians, Utes, ranchers, outlaws, ferrymen, and moonshiners. Their presentation (and books) show how these peoples made a living in a harsh but beautiful environment. It will feature the relationship of the Fremont people in the canyon to those in Nine Mile and Range Creek Canyons, both famous side canyons of the Green. Their conversation will conclude with recent threats to the canyon and plateau: oil and gas drilling (notably protested by a University of Utah student) and a dam on the Yampa River, a major tributary to the Green.
Level 2 Canteena
From A to Z: Make Your Own Altered Book and/or Zine
Make a zine or alter a children's board book into a work of art. This free-form workshop is designed for those who want to spend the afternoon, or just a few minutes exploring the creation of zines or altered books. Basic instructions will be given at the start of the program which will run from 1:00-5:00 p.m. or while supplies last. Books about how to make zines and altered books will also be available in the area for check-out.
Sponsor: The City Library
Level 4 Special Collections Room
Alison Bartlett in conversation with Ken Sanders
Author Allison Hoover Bartlett and rare book dealer Ken Sanders will discuss Bartlett's book The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. Called "compelling with elegant suspense," by bestselling author Erik Larson, the book tells the cat-and-mouse story of an obsessed thief and a tenacious bibliodick (book dealer who doubles as a detective). The book also exposes the profound role books play in all of our lives, the reverence in which these everyday objects are still held, and the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.
Level 4 Conference Room
Susan Gunter in conversation with Mike Dorrell
Susan Gunter and Mike Dorrell will discuss Susan's recent book, Alice in Jamesland, the first biography of Alice Howe Gibbens James—wife of the psychologist and philosopher William James, and sister-in-law of novelist Henry James—was made possible by the rediscovery of hundreds of her letters and papers thought to be destroyed in the 1960s. Encompassing European travel, Civil War profiteering, suicide, a stormy courtship, séances, psychedelic mushrooms, the death of a child, and an enduring love story, Alice in Jamesland is a portrait of a nineteenth-century upper-middle-class marriage, told often through Alice’s own letters and made all the more dynamic because of her role in the James family.
Children’s Story Room
From Literacy to Literary: Children’s Books Too Good to Miss
Join Nancy Livingston as she talks about children’s books too good to miss! Nancy’s experience lends itself to a lively discussion, including a look at books such as What do You do with a Tail Like This? Wow! America, Artful Reading, and How Big Is It? Nancy is the education specialist in Title I at the Utah State Office of Education, teaches children’s literature classes for several universities, and serves on several community boards related to literacy.
Children’s Craft Room
Children’s Bookmaking
Underage bookmakers start from scratch as they create and decorate their own books. Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
Level 1 Fireplace
Book Arts Offerings
Join Book Arts Program staff to learn about and participate in a wide variety of activities!
- Papermaking: Learn how to turn pulp into paper and take home your very own handmade sheet
- Printing: Using a tabletop clamshell press, hand print your very own book festival keepsake
- Bookbinding: Learn from the best as professional bookbinders demonstrate the methods they use in binding books
- Adult Bookmaking: Discover several ways to fashion books and adapt these forms to fit your own creative impulses
Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
SLCC Community Writing Center
Into Ink: A Poetry Reading by Local Teens
Sometimes teenagers and adults don’t understand each other, but, according to Shelley, “Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which has been distorted.” Come listen to the beauty in teen’s voices at the SLCC Community Writing Center, located on Library Square. Teens will read from their original work created in a two-part CWC poetry workshop.
Sponsor: SLCC Community Writing Center
4:30-5:30 p.m.
Auditorium
Shannon Hale in conversation with Sara Zarr
Sara and Shannon will be discussing the craft of writing, comparing writing processes, story and character creation. As award winning authors, they share experience in the highs and lows of the publishing career and will discuss how to get the first book out as well as keep finding new stories and maintain a writing schedule. They will also take questions from the audience.
Conference Rooms A/B
Jed Perl in conversation with Lela Graybill
Antoine Watteau, one of the most mysterious painters who ever lived, is the subject of Antoine’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World, which author Jed Perl will discuss with Lela Graybill. Together they’ll explore the enduring fascination of this eighteenth-century artist, who died of tuberculosis in 1721, at the age of 36, and who is probably the greatest of all painters of young love and imperishable dreams. In this brilliant collage of a book we’re invited to explore a life and a vision that encompass the glamour and intrigue of eighteenth-century Paris, the riotous history of Harlequin and Pierrot, and the work of the modern giants who admired Watteau, including Cézanne, Picasso, and Samuel Beckett. To weave together the variegated strands in this amazing story, Perl, a well-known critic of contemporary art, has created a book in the form of an alphabet, using historical fact and personal reflection to spin a tale that is by turns somber and beguiling, analytical and impressionistic.
Conference Room C
Publishing First Fiction
Two debut authors and a literary-magazine editor explain what writers should know, and do, when a story, collection or novel is ready for publication. Moderator Pam Balluck, former fiction editor of Quarterly West, offers a magazine’s perspective; Lynn Kilpatrick, author of story collection In the House (FC2, 2010), and Dylan Landis, author of novel-in-stories Normal People Don't Live Like This, discuss their different paths to publication. They will read briefly from their work, offer advice on submission logs, query letters, submitting work to editors and/or agents, and discuss common mistakes that new writers can avoid.
Level 2 Canteena
From A to Z: Make Your Own Altered Book and/or Zine
Make a zine or alter a children's board book into a work of art. This free-form workshop is designed for those who want to spend the afternoon, or just a few minutes exploring the creation of zines or altered books. Basic instructions will be given at the start of the program which will run from 1-5 p.m. or while supplies last. Books about how to make zines and altered books will also be available in the area for check-out.
Sponsor: The City Library
Level 4 Special Collections Room
Jason Whitmarsh in conversation with Susan Howe
Jason Whitmarsh and Susan Elizabeth Howe will discuss Jason's recent book of poems, Tomorrow's Living Room, winner of the 2009 May Swenson Poetry Award. Some of the poems in this dazzling collection first appeared in magazines including The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Verse, and The Yale Review. Billy Collins (judge for the 2009 competition, distinguished poet, and former U.S. Poet Laureate) says of this collection, "Jason Whitmarsh has carved out a verbal territory for himself unlike anyone else's. It is the kind of voice that whistles for our attention."
Sponsors: Utah Humanities Council; Utah State University; Brigham Young University
Level 4 Conference Room
Edwin Torres: Performance Workshop with Teens
Teens are invited to join with celebrated poet Edwin Torres in the workshop BRAINLINGO: Writing The Voice Of The Body. Torres states: “As artists we create our own communication. How we listen affects how we speak, how we see our language affects how our voice is heard, and where the senses meet each other is where poetry can begin. This workshop will be an active creative laboratory that will explore how we communicate by exercising the languages inside us. Exercises will be balanced by critiques. This is an active writing workshop for open minds.” This will also be an exciting workshop!
Sponsor: Westminster College
Children’s Story Room
Monogatari: Bilingual Storytime in Japanese and English
Come and hear the stories that will take you away to the land of Japan. Japanese stories will be presented with one in English and Japanese. Stories will be read by LuAnne Nakamura, a children's librarian at the Chapman Branch Library, who shares her Japanese heritage and culture through crafts, foods and children's books. Come and hear stories and make crafts to take home.
Sponsor: The City Library; Utah Humanities Council
Children’s Craft Room
Children’s Bookmaking
Underage bookmakers start from scratch as they create and decorate their own books. Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
Level 1 Fireplace
Book Arts Offerings
Join Book Arts Program staff to learn about and participate in a wide variety of activities!
- Papermaking: Learn how to turn pulp into paper and take home your very own handmade sheet
- Printing: Using a tabletop clamshell press, hand print your very own book festival keepsake
- Bookbinding: Learn from the best as professional bookbinders demonstrate the methods they use in binding books
- Adult Bookmaking: Discover several ways to fashion books and adapt these forms to fit your own creative impulses
Presented and sponsored by the Book Arts Program, Marriott Library, University of Utah.
6-9 p.m.
Auditorium
Screening of the film, The Hours, followed by Michael Cunningham in conversation with Robert Newman
Michael Cunningham’s remarkable book, The Hours, was winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. The film adaptation of the same name made its debut in 2003 to resounding acclaim, garnering nine Academy Award nominations, with Nicole Kidman winning an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Join us for a special screening of The Hours, beginning at 6:00pm in the Library’s Auditorium (with overflow seating available in Conference Rooms A, B, and C), to be followed by Michael Cunningham in conversation with Robert Newman as he discusses his book and the film. Q&A from the audience will round out the evening’s event.
Sponsors: College of Humanities, University of Utah; Utah Humanities Council; University of Utah Creative Writing Program; Salt Lake Film Society; University of Utah, English Department; University of Utah, Gender Studies