Authors Live: Melanie Rae Thon

Salt Lake City Main Library
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City UT 84111
(801) 524-8200

When: Saturday, October 2, 7 p.m.

Author Melanie Rae Thon is a professor in the Creative Writing and Environmental Humanities programs at the University of Utah. Her most recent books are the novel The Voice of the River and In This Light: New and Selected Stories, both to be published in 2011. She is also the author of the novels Sweet Hearts, Meteors in August, and Iona Moon, as well as the story collections First, Body and Girls in the Grass. Thon's work has been included in Best American Short Stories (1995, 1996), three Pushcart Prize Anthologies (2003, 2006, 2008), and O. Henry Prize Stories (2006). She is a recipient of the 1997 Whiting Writer's Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1992 and 2008), a 2005 Writer's Residency from the Lannan Foundation, and a fellowship from the Tanner Humanities Center (2009).

Join us for our quarterly “Local Author Showcase” event.

We’ll be joined by four local authors, each with unique new books to share. They include Bill Housley (Into the Dark: Escape of the Nomad), Amy Maddocks (Too Precious for Earth), Nancy Miles (In Good Taste: Create Your Own Family History Cookbook), and Robert Goble (A Winter Morning’s Sun and Across a Harvested Field).

Mark Feldstein will read from his new book, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture. Feldstein tells the story of the bitter struggle between the most reviled newsman and embattled politician of the post-war era.

The Jung Society of Utah presents:
October 8 (Friday) - free event - Facing Fate, Finding A Destiny
Renown Storyteller and Mythologist, Michael Meade, in Salt Lake City!

According to ancient myths, each soul makes two agreements upon entering the world. The first agreement binds the individual to a distinct destiny. The second agreement entangles each person in the limitations of fate and responsibilities. While all second agreements can be renegotiated, the first agreement is non-negotiable. If a person doesn’t face their fate, they may never find their natural gifts. If a person doesn’t risk their destiny, they’ll never know who they are intended to be. Join us for an exploration of identity, meaning, purpose and passion.

NEW LOCATION: We host this event at the Jewish Community Center (2 North Medical Drive, Salt Lake City).

The story written on the walls of the soul is the great experiment of each life. In this rare opportunity workshop, we will examine the life lived so far and separate the self ’s vital story and creative calling from the corpse of the past and the darkness of the present. We will tend to places where the soul carries its initiations and where the deep self tries to awaken us to the sacred path of knowledge and love hidden within our lives.

This workshop will benefit those involved in dream work, creative work, community building, therapy, mentoring, teaching, healing, spiritual development, ecological and social activism. All mental health professionals are eligible to receive six CEUs.

To buy the workshop tickets please click here.

Discounts available for the Jung Society of Utah members

John Vaillant is a freelance magazine writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Outside, and Men’s Journal, among others. He is the author of The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed and the Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, both from Random House. The Seattle Times book reviewer John Marshall commented that "Vaillant's greatest accomplishment is that he not only ranges so far and wide, he weaves disparate plot elements into a compelling narrative that is never less than fascinating.” Vaillant lives with his wife and children in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Part of the 2011 Guest Writers Series—a monthly series, scheduled on Thursday evenings, which brings in contemporary writers from across the county, presented in partnership with the University of Utah Department of English and Creative Writing Program, the Salt Lake City Arts Council. The public readings at the Art Barn, 54 Finch Lane, are free and followed by a reception to meeting the writers. Discussions are led by U of U Department of English scholars before the readings. Call 801.581.7478 for details. Book signing sponsored by The King’s English Bookshop.

Tuesday, November 2, 7 p.m.

As part of her national book tour, the creator of the
popular website FoodPornDaily.com (which has had more than 23 million
hits since 2008) will be in Salt Lake to promote her new cookbook. Food Porn Daily, the cookbook, provides an uncensored, up-close look
at food so delectable it's positively sinful.

Author Amanda Simpson,
whose website generates more than 50,000 hits a day, says that food porn
is a high-resolution, close-up image of any food that gets your
salivary glands flowing, whether a huge, juicy cheeseburger, or a
healthy-yet-flavorful piece of grilled fish. Calories play no role in
the definition.

The cookbook, Food Porn Daily, is filled with more than 230 recipes, 100
pictures of endless moments of flip, drool, cook, eat, repeat. After a
decade in the restaurant business, Amanda moved
to San Diego where she worked for years as a mental health counselor
before deciding that food was her real passion. She has been working as a
personal chef ever since.

Saturday, November 6, 2 p.m.

Local author and illustrator team, Mark and Caralyn Buehner will read from and sign their newest picture book, Snowmen all Year.

The Buehners are the beloved creators of Fanny's Dream, Snowmen at Christmas, and The Queen of Style.

Friday, November 12, 4 p.m.

Friday Fun for Kids at the King's! Children, ages 3-8, will enjoy a harvest of Thanksgiving stories and a hands-on project. A snack will also be provided. Registration is required, along with a $5 fee to cover materials. Call 801-484-9100 to register or for more information.

Saturday, November 13, 2 p.m.

E.E. King will read from and sign her new book, Dirk Quigby's Guide to the Afterlife. It is, among other things, a unique travel guide to the many heavens of all the different religions, with a five-star rating system for music, food, drink, and accommodations. A perfect way to find out about all the afterlives in an entertaining way! 

Carl Phillips is the author of eleven books of poems, most recently Speak Low (2009) and Double Shadow, forthcoming in spring 2011. Lawrence Biemiller in the Chronicle of Higher Education says of Phillips’ work, “They’re poems of sleeping and dreaming, of forgiveness, of longing for someone or fearing you'll lose him, of letters signed with love." Phillips’ awards and honors include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Award, and awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets, to which he was named a chancellor in 2006. Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Andrew Farnsworth, winner of the Scowcroft Prize, is an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Utah where he also researches as a J. Willard Marriott Public History Fellow for the American West Center. Formerly, he was the Robert D. Sutherland Fellow in fiction at Illinois State University, and his recent work can be seen in Artifice Magazine. 

Part of the 2011 Guest Writers Series—a monthly series, scheduled on Thursday evenings, which brings in contemporary writers from across the county, presented in partnership with the University of Utah Department of English and Creative Writing Program, the Salt Lake City Arts Council. The public readings at the Art Barn, 54 Finch Lane, are free and followed by a reception to meeting the writers. Discussions are led by U of U Department of English scholars before the readings. Call 801.581.7478 for details. Book signing sponsored by The King’s English Bookshop.

Saturday, November 20, 2 p.m.

Sarahlee Lawrence will read from and sign her debut book, River House.
An exquisite blend of memoir and nature writing, the book is a young
woman's story about returning home. Sarahlee Lawrence grew up in remote
central Oregon and spent her days dreaming about leaving her small town
for adventure. By the age of twenty-one, Lawrence had rafted some of the
world's most dangerous rivers as an accomplished river guide, but
living her dream led her back to the place that she least expected to
end up.

Wednesday, December 1, 7 p.m.

Meet your neighbors for refreshments and conversation at the Wasatch Hollow Social.

Betsy Burton from The King's English Bookshop and Troy Peterson from Caputo's on 15th will talk about the history and future of the 15th and 15th area and offer suggestions for holiday gift-giving (with 15% off at both businesses that evening). The 15th Street Gallery, site of the event, will extend a 20% discount to customers that night.

Thursday, December 9, 4 - 6 p.m.

A Seussical Afternoon with Rob Eckman

Our resident storyteller extraordinaire presents a collection of
classic Dr. Seuss stories, capping the event off with a reading of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

Saturday, December 18, 11 a.m.

Don't miss this very special storytime with Cheryl celebrating the Holidays!

Friday, January 14, 4 p.m.

Friday Fun for Kids at the King's!

Children, ages 3-8, will enjoy a veritable snowstorm of winter-themed stories and a hands-on project. A snack will also be provided. Registration is required, along with a $5 fee to cover materials. Call 801-484-9100 to register or for more information. 

Part of the The Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry Series

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of two collections of poetry, Black Swan (2002) which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and ]Open Interval[  (2009), a finalist for the National Book Award which Bomb magazine calls, “a lovely meditation on the concept of distance.”  The National Book Award citation reads, “Passionate and personal, innovative and elegant, ]Open Interval[ marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker’s precision. The book takes on the actual astronomical phenomenon of ‘RR Lyrae’ stars not only to form a metaphor for the self, but to reveal a constellation of lyric impulses. In exploded sonnets, taut syllabics, Dickinsonian dashes, or that new poetic invention, the bop, Van Clief-Stefanon writes of science, rock-n-roll, and the history of a heart that could be hers, but speaks to all of ours.” Van Clief-Stefanon teaches at Cornell University.

Jill McDonough was a Stegner fellow at Stanford, and has published one book of poems, Habeas Corpus (2008), 50 sonnets, each one about a legal execution from 1608 to 2005. Poet Eavan Boland writes, “These poems, with their catalog of deaths and histories, build a powerful, relentless music. The music and plain-spoken craft in turn make clear that the true subject here is not death but human survival — in memory, language and suffering.”  When she’s not teaching at Westminster College, McDonough works with incarcerated college students through Boston University's Prison Education Program. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center and in 2010, is a Witter Bynner Fellow at the Library of Congress.

Dumke Student Theatre, Emma Eccles Jones Conservatory.
Booksigning sponsored by The King’s English Bookshop.
For more information, please contact Natasha Sajé, professor of English, at 801.832.2376 or nsaje@westminstercollege.edu.

February 28, 12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Reading and book signing with Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History & Science Studies,
University of California, San Diego; Adjunct Professor of Geosciences, Scripps Institution of Oceanography  

Call the Wallace Stegner Center for more information: 801-585-3440

1 hour CLE. Lunch Provided.  

Thursday, March 3, 7 p.m.

Join us for a special reading in celebration of the
release of Whitethorn, the new collection of poems by award-winning
poet Jacqueline Osherow.

Osherow, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah, has authored five other books of poetry and her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Twentieth Century American Poetry, Best American Poetry (1995 and 1998), The New Yorker, Paris Review and many others.

At the I.J. & Jeanné Wagner Jewish Community Center.

Wednesday, March 9, 7 p.m.

Paige Shelton will read from and sign book two of her "Farmers’ Market Mystery Series," Fruit of All Evil.

A couple weeks after its release, book one, Farm Fresh Murder, hit the New York Times Mass-Market Paperback Extended Best Seller List.

Paige moved around a lot as a kid but went to high school and college in Des Moines, Iowa. She moved to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1988.

Saturday, March 19, 11 a.m.

Meet Jennifer Fosberry when she reads from and signs copies of her latest children’s book My Name is Not Alexander.

As with her first book, My Name is Not Isabella, this sequel continues to encourage children to adopt role models from world history.

This annual event is our favorite part of March. Come and celebrate the great poetry of Ireland old and new. Themes this year inlcude Born in Ireland, Dying Young in Ireland, and Mystical Ireland.

Saturday, March 19, 7 p.m.

Salt Lake native and author Anne Zimmerman will read from and sign her first book, An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M. F. K. Fisher. Learn more about the legendary M.F.K Fisher and how her iconic writing forever changed the genre of food writing. The book, just published in February 2011, is already garnering wonderful reviews from Publisher's Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, the Salt Lake Weekly and even The Wall Street Journal.

Anne Zimmerman was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. She currently calls San Francisco's Mission neighborhood home. When not writing, she scours the internet and flips through her piles of cookbooks and past Gourmet Magazines, making lists of things to cook and bake.

Saturday, March 26, 2 p.m.

Salt Lake's own mini cupcake specialist, Leslie Fiet will be at the bookstore to sign her yummy cookbook.

Did we mention we'll have cupcakes?

Tuesday, March 29, 7 p.m.

Sensational young adult author Carrie Ryan visits us to read from and sign her newest book in The Forest of Hands and Teeth series, The Dark and Hollow Places.

At the Salt Lake City Public Library, Main Library, 210 East 400 South.