Here are the many authors, poets and events that we have planned for the Utah Humanities Book Festival in Weber County.
September 16
Tales from One Thousand and One Nights
Saturday, September 16, Pleasant Valley Branch, Weber County Library, 10:30 am.
Storytellers Extraordinaire, Janine Nishiguchi & Karl Behling will enchant children of all ages with tales taken from One Thousand and One Nights. From “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” to “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor,” audiences will be transported by magic carpet to other lands and other times. Following the storytelling, kids will have the chance to color in their own magic carpets to take home! For more information visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/162205721011286
Janine Nishiguchi and Karl Behling
Pleasant Valley Branch, Weber County Library, 5568 S 500 E, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
September 21
Imagination, Orient, and the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
Thursday, September 21, Pleasant Valley Branch – Weber County Library, 6:30 pm.
Join Kevin Blankinship, Lecturer in Arabic Language & Culture at the University of Utah, who will present a fun, informative talk on “Imagination, Orient, and the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.” It will address the 1,001 Nights as a popular folktale in the medieval Islamic world and as a window on the Orient in the modern West. In both contexts, the 1,001 Nights has been above all a catalyst for the human imagination. Throughout the centuries, people have inscribed their desires, fears, nightmares and fantasies into the many stories that make up the Nights. This ultimately shows how fiction might be different from fact, but it can still reveal truth. For more information visit: ttps://www.facebook.com/events/650739095130660
Kevin Blankinship
Pleasant Valley Branch, Weber County Library, 5568 S 500 E, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
September 22
Mark Sundeen
Friday, September 22, Ogden Nature Center, 6:30 pm
Author Mark Sundeen visits the Ogden Nature Center to discuss his new book, The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America.
In the dead of winter, a former marine biologist and his pregnant wife, a classically trained opera singer, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they’ve purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her husband, a product of the white flight from it, have turned to urban farming to revitalize the blighted city they both love. And near Missoula, Montana, a couple who have been at the forefront of organic farming for decades navigate what it means to live and raise a family ethically.
More than ever, we seem to be yearning for “the simple life.” We want to reconnect with the land and the environment in a deeper way that can assuage modern ills. We seek a livelihood that exercises body and mind without taking a toll on the planet. We long to nurture spirit and community instead of distracting and isolating ourselves with electronics. We even dream utopian dreams of discovering ways of life that model for others answers to the question of how we can live more sustainably, peacefully, authentically. A work of immersive journalism steeped in a distinctively American social history and sparked by a personal quest, The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life not only through the stories of those three very different couples, but through the visionaries, ascetics, and artists that inspired each of them to walk away from the life they knew in order to find (or create) a better existence. Captivating and clear-eyed, it dares us to imagine what a sustainable, ethical, authentic future might actually look like.
Mark Sundeen is the author of The Unsettlers, The Man Who Quit Money, The Making of Toro, and Car Camping. He has won fellowships from the Macdowell Colony, the Montana Arts Council and the Utah Arts Council. A correspondent for Outside Magazine, his work has appeared in the New York Times, The Believer, National Geographic Adventure, and McSweeneys. For information on Mark Sundeen visit his web site at http://www.marksundeen.com
Mark Sundeen
http://www.ogdennaturecenter.org
Ogden Nature Center, 966 W. 12th St, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
September 27
Eduardo C. Corral
Wednesday, September 27, Ogden Union Station, 7 pm.
Nationally acclaimed poet Eduardo C. Corral will give a reading followed by a live podcast interview with writer and LITerally host, Kase Johnstun. This event is free and open to the public. Book sales provided by Booked on 25th.
Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Slow Lightning, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. He’s the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry Magazine. He teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University. During the 2017-18 academic year, he’ll be a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.
Eduardo C. Corral
Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
September 28
2017 Distinguished Literary Arts Advocate Award: Dr. Mikel Vause
Thursday, September 28, Eccles Community Art Center, 7 pm.
Weber Book Links 2017 Distinguished Literary Arts Advocate Award is presented annually to an individual, or individuals, whose efforts have enhanced and contributed to the vibrant literary community in Weber County.
Weber Book Links 2017 Distinguished Literary Arts Advocate Award recipient, Dr. L. Mikel Vause, will accept this award and speak to those in attendance about his passion for the humanities, love for literature, and how these translate into action and change for a better local and global community. He will also share some of his poetry.
Dr. L. Mikel Vause is a professor of English Literature at Weber State University and co-founder of The National Undergraduate Conference. Dr. Vause, born and raised in Ogden, Utah has taught and mentored countless students during his tenure at WSU. He has inspired students through his teaching, writing, and exemplary life, which has been dedicated to his family, students, and community. For more than 33 years Dr. Vause has been responsible for bringing some of the best writers to the Ogden community for both The National Undergraduate Literature Conference and the Ogden School Foundation Fall Author Event. His love for literature and the humanities is demonstrated by his level of commitment to make his avocation his vocation and to help spread the way in which words and books change lives.
Dr. Mikel Vause
Eccles Community Art Center, 2580 Jefferson Ave, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 4
Rayn D. Paul
Wednesday, October 4, Ogden Union Station, 7 pm.
Join Union Station for a program from Ryan D. Paul centered around the evolution of superhero comics and what they teach us about being human.
Ryan D. Paul currently works as the Museum Curator for Frontier Homestead State Park Museum and as an adjunct Professor of History and Arts Administration at Southern Utah University. He is working on a book about the employees of the Utah Parks Company, has written five documentary films, authored the 50th Anniversary book of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, lectured across the State as a Utah Humanities Council Road Scholar, and created a number of museum exhibits. He holds a Master’s Degree from Southern Utah University in Arts Administration and a Master’s Degree in History from the University of Mississippi. He is a devotee of all things Elvis, Dr. Who, and DC Comics.
Ryan D. Paul
Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 4
Self Published Authors
Wednesday, October 4, 2017, Southwest Branch, Weber County Library, through the day.
Are you writing a novel or would like to but don’t know where to start? Join us at the Southwest Branch of the Weber County Library for workshops with Johnny Worthen and Aaron Yeager who will discuss how to create strong characters and settings, develop plot and story arcs, and how a little research can go a long way, as well as Lisa Dawn MacDonald, who is the Author Liaison, and Marketing and Promotion Director for The Wild Rose Press, a mid-size publisher.
Workshops: Marketing Workshop – Lisa Dawn MacDonald. Johnny Worthen:The Faceted Novel. Aaron Yeager: Girls just want to have fun.
Lastly, an author panel featuring Marie Higgins, Mary Martinez, Stanalei Fletcher, Karla Jay and Patricia G. Stevenson will be followed by a book signing.
Southwest Branch, Weber County Library, 2039 W. 4000 S. Roy
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 5
Jaquira Diaz
Thursday, October 5, Room 312, Union Building, Weber State University, 6 pm.
Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz is the 2016-18 Kenyon Review Fellow in Prose, and recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, the Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and an NEA Fellowship to the Hambidge Center for the Arts. She’s been awarded fellowships or scholarships from The MacDowell Colony, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Summer Literary Seminars, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Best American Essays 2016, Rolling Stone, Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses, The Guardian, The FADER, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Sun, The Southern Review, Salon, Brevity, Ninth Letter, Slice, TriQuarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications.
Jaquira Díaz
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 6
Erika L. Sanchez / Kaveh Akbar
Friday, October 6, 2017, Ogden Union Station, reading and conversation, 7 pm.
Join Union Station for a very special reading and conversation with nationally and critically acclaimed poets Kaveh Akbar and Erika L. Sánchez. This event is free and open to the public. Books sales provided by Booked on 25th.
Kaveh Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper. His poems appear recently in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, APR, Tin House, and elsewhere. His debut full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is just out with Alice James Books; he is also the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic. The recipient of a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and is a Visiting Professor of Poetry in the Purdue University MFA program.
Erika L. Sanchez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. A poet, essayist, and fiction writer, she is the author of a young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2017) and the poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf, 2017). Her nonfiction has been published in Al Jazeera, Cosmopolitan, ESPN.com, the Guardian, NBC News, Rolling Stone,Salon, and elsewhere. She has received a CantoMundo Fellowship, a Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. She is a 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellow.
Kaveh Akbar and Erika L. Sanchez
Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 7
2nd Annual Science Fiction/Fantasy Day with Brandon Mull
Saturday, October 7, 2017, Ogden High School, 11 am to 6 pm.
Brandon Mull is our guest author at the Utah Humanities Book Festival, Weber Book Links 2nd annual Science Fiction and Fantasy Day event, for more information on the day’s activities and events visit https://brandonmullogdenvisit.wordpress.com. Brandon has worked as a comedian, a filing clerk, a patio installer, a movie promoter, a copywriter, and briefly as a chicken stacker. For a couple of years, he lived in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile, where he learned Spanish and juggling. He currently lives in Utah in a happy little valley near the mouth of a canyon with his four children and dog named Buffy. Brandon is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Fablehaven, Beyonders, and Five Kingdoms series. For more information about his books visit his web site at http://brandonmull.com/about-brandon-mull/
Brandon Mull
http://ogdenschoolfoundation.org
Ogden High School, 2828 Harrison Blvd, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 10
James D’Arc
Tuesday, October 10, Southwest Branch, Weber County Library, 6 pm. Film screening, 6:40 pm.
Why does Hollywood love Utah so much? Come meet film historian and author James D’Arc and learn about the long history of film in Utah. Then stick around for screening of the family favorite ‘The Sandlot,’ much of which was filmed right in Ogden.
James D’Arc’s ‘When Hollywood Came to Town’ documents over a century of film in Utah, during which the state played host to scores of Hollywood films, from potboilers on lean budgets to some of the most memorable films ever made, including The Searchers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Footloose, and Thelma & Louise and telling how these films were made, what happened on and off set, and more. As one Utah rancher memorably said, Hollywood moviemakers “don’t take anything but pictures and don’t leave anything but money.”
James V. D’Arc , Ph.D., is Curator of the BYU Motion Picture Archive, the BYU Film Music Archive and the Arts and Communications Archive of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University. He directs the BYU Motion Picture Archive Film Series, produces a CD series of original motion picture soundtrack, and appears on DVD documentaries dealing with classic films. For over 30 years, Dr. D’Arc has lectured internationally on motion picture history and has taught film courses at BYU. He lives in Orem, Utah.
The Sandlot is a 1993 American coming-of-age baseball film co-written and directed by David M. Evans, which tells the story of a group of young baseball players during the summer of 1962. It stars Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Karen Allen, Denis Leary and James Earl Jones. The filming locations were in Glendale, Midvale, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, Utah.
James V. D’Arc
Southwest Branch, Weber County Library, 2039 W. 4000 S. Roy
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 14
Gwendolyn Brooks
Saturday, October 14, Ogden Union Station, 6:30 pm.
This reading of Miss Brooks’ poems will include students, teachers, writers, and many other community members. This event is free and open to the public and will take place in our Wattis Dumke room. Refreshments will be served.
Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, and spent most of her life on Chicago’s South Side, whose Bronzeville neighborhood she memorialized in her poetry. She was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize, for ‘Annie Allen’ in 1950. At age 68, Brooks was the first black woman appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Later she served as Poet Laureate of Illinois, personally funding literary awards for young writers and visiting grade schools, colleges, universities, prisons, hospitals, and drug rehabilitation centers.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 17
Ashley Wolff
Tuesday, October 17, 2017, Treehouse Children’s Museum, 6 pm.
Join us at the Treehouse Museum for a special evening with author and illustrator Ashley Wolff for a book launch party for her new book Where, Oh Where, Is Baby Bear? There will be lots of bear-themed activities for the whole family.
Ashley Wolff has been a visual artist since she declared herself one at the age of 5. She grew up in Middlebury, Vermont and holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design.
Ashley is the author and/or illustrator of over 60 children’s picture books including Baby Bear Sees Blue, Baby Beluga by Raffi, Stella and Roy Go Camping, Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? by Philemon Sturges and Bonnie Lass, When Lucy Goes Out Walking, I Call My Grandma Nana, Compost Stew by Mary McKenna Siddals and the beloved Miss Bindergarten Series by Joseph Slate Her books have won numerous state and national awards.
For 30 years one of Ashley’s favorite pastimes has been traveling to schools all over the US, speaking to children about writing, drawing and using their imaginations to help them find their own paths to the future.
Every summer Ashley teaches writing and introduction to media in the Children’s Picture Book Writing & Illustration MFA and certificate programs at Hollins University. She lives and works beside a lake in Leicester, VT.
Ashley Wolff
Ashley’s book Where, Oh Where, Is Baby Bear? to be released, October 17 at the museum. You can check out Ashley’s other books and art at http://ashleywolff.com
http://www.treehousemuseum.org
Treehouse Children’s Museum, 347 E. 22nd St, Ogden
Utah Humanities Book Festival in Weber County
October 26
Cherie Davis
Thursday, October 26, 2017, Pleasant Valley Branch, Weber County Library, 7 pm.
Join professional storyteller, Cherie Davis, as she brings to life terrifying tales of haunted locations around Utah. Young and old alike will be enthralled by Cherie’s spine tingling accounts of unexplained phenomenon. Her new book, ‘Spooks and Saints, Intriguing Ghost Legends of Salt Lake City, Utah’ will be available for purchase.
Do you believe in Ghosts? How about Spirits? You do not have to believe in ghosts to enjoy a good ghost story. Spooks and Saints is a book about some of the many intriguing ghost legends that have arisen in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Well known across the globe for the “Saints” that live here, Salt Lake also is home to people of varied backgrounds as well as some “Spooks.” These are their stories.
While working with StoryTours of Salt Lake City Cherie, along with StoryTours founder Kristen Clay and others, started to research the ghostly tales of Salt Lake City. Although not originally a believer in ghosts, she did believe in life after death and a spirit world. She relates a quote from Kathryn Windham, “You don’t have to believe in ghosts to enjoy a good ghost story”. With that, after listening to others relate their experiences as well as hearing about the eerie encounters of her friends, her mind started to accept the posibility of ghosts. She was suprised at the number of tales related to her. It seemed every year more and more people would come forward with ghost stories.
Soon there were more stories than could be shared in a tour … or even four tours. It was decided that the best way to keep track of all the stories and to share them with others would be to publish a book. With the help of other storytellers some of the favorite stories as well as some new ghost tales have been published as Spooks and Saints.
Cherie Davis
Pleasant Valley Branch, Weber County Library, 5568 S 500 E, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
October 27
Murder Mystery
Friday, October 27, Ogden Union Station, 6:30 pm
Join some of Ogden’s most talented improvisers as they lead you through the twists and turns of a hilarious literary murder mystery!
Free event. *Pre-registration required* (Capped at 40 participants):
REGISTRATION IS FULL
Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave, Ogden
Weber County, Utah Humanities Book Festival
Weber Book Links 