Book reviews on visual arts books and books related to Utah’s art community.
There’s a moment in A Song for Issy Bradley, Carys Bray’s luminous first novel (and 15 Bytes Book Award finalist this year), when a teenage Mormon girl named Zippy is asked at a party she’s not supposed to be at, “[I]f you weren’t already a member, would you […]
by Lisa Bickmore When, at the beginning of the New Year, the great separation occurs—I’m talking about the separation between the resolution makers and the resolution deniers—you’ll have to count me among the makers. I like the idea of a reassessment, a chance to reflect and set a […]
Braden Hepner’s first novel, Pale Harvest (Torrey House Press), is a Sisyphean tale of a young man yearning for more than warm udders, manure, and the patience to make a straight-line furrow with an old tractor held together with bailing wire. The novel is set on a […]
David Lee will be reading and discussing his work, including the book reviewed below, at four different sites in Utah during October as part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival: 10/8 at the SLC Public Library (4th floor) in partnership with City Arts (with poet Gailmarie Pahmeier); […]
We are pleased to announce the 2014 15 Bytes Book Awards. The 15 Bytes Book Awards, currently in its second year, celebrates exceptional books of poetry, fiction and visual art published in the previous calendar year based on each book’s quality/craftsmanship of writing, level of engagement and how […]
The Supermodel and the Brillo Box: Back Stories and Peculiar Economics From the World of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014. ISBN 978-1-137-27908-8, 288 pages. Ten Rather Eccentric Essays on Art: Reflections on Damien Hirst, postmodernism, the art market, food in art and more […]
Nate Liederbach’s Negative Spaces is a short collection of three stories — just 82 pages — packed with magical writing and imagery that sticks with you long after you’ve closed the covers. Set in the American West and Midwest — Idaho, Colorado, Kansas — this is a challenging […]
For a father, raising a son is fraught with missteps and reversals, aggravation and joy. I can say this with confidence having raised a couple of sons of my own and still working on a third. The hardest part is finding ways to relate. I’ve tried all […]
For fans of experimental or metamodern fiction, Lance Olsen is a well-known name. He has published over twenty volumes of fiction, essays, and “anti-textbook” work, with another forthcoming. There are few writers working today who are more prolific, inventive and as simultaneously micro- and macrocosmic in scope as […]
In an interview with 15 Bytes on the occasion of the its publication, Max Werner explained that his fourth book, Evolved: Chronicles of a Pleistocene Mind, was actually written before the three that preceded it into print: Black River Dreams, a collection of literary essays about fishing, Crooked […]
C. Wade Bentley’s poetry chapbook Askew is appropriately titled because so many of its poems accentuate the way reality can be tilted through verse to expose bits of newness in the monotony of everyday life. Bentley’s poems are often narrative in that they tell a story in miniature, a small […]
In his 2012 collection House Under the Moon, it’s clear that poet Michael Sowder has suffered for his art, as spiritual seekers do. The first section (“Homecoming”) starts with a kind of post mortem of the life previous—another marriage, a father whose marginalia in a book sends the […]
On December 2nd, The King’s English hosted Wendy Perron, editor of Dance Magazine, to read from her new book Through the Eyes of a Dancer. The reading encapsulated much dance history, fostering connections between those working in ballet, modern dance, and spaces between. The night connected the artists in […]
We are pleased to announce that Barbara K. Richardson’s novel Tributary has been awarded the 2013 15 Bytes Book Award for Fiction. The author will receive a small cash award to recognize her achievement. Our congratulations also go out to our other two finalists for the award, Miah […]
A new book edited by Frank McEntire explores the life and art of the late V. Douglas Snow.
It’s hard to decide what’s better in this new book published by Gibbs Smith: the recipes or the art.
Since Japanese American sculptor Ruth Asawa passed away at her San Francisco home earlier this week, we’ve decided to run a review of the book The Sculptures of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air, which appeared in the February 2007 edition of 15 Bytes. The Sculpture of Ruth […]
Death in the Present Katharine Coles’ The Earth Is Not Flat by Camille Pack Katharine Coles couldn’t trust her senses. On a grant from the National Science Foundation, she boarded a ship to cross the infamous Drake Passage, the world’s roughest crossing, to live in Antarctica. For the celebrated […]
