For Immediate Release
Contact:
City Art Director Joel Long: joeltlong@yahoo.com
George B. Handley and Steven Peck to read at City Art
Salt Lake Public Library Main Branch
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City UT 84111
Wednesday September 19th, 7:00—8:00 P.M.
Brigham Young University professors George B. Handley and
Steven Peck visit the Salt Lake City Library to discuss their work on
Wednesday, September 19th at 7:00 PM. This event is part of the City Art
Reading Series.
Handley will share work from his new book,
American Fork. This book tells the story of a shared love of the Utah landscape
that heals family wounds for two unlikely friends Zacharias Harker, a brilliant
botanist and an aging recluse, and Alba, a young woman he hires to paint
flowers for a book he is writing on the implications of climate change focused
on the wildflowers of Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.
Over the course of their unlikely friendship,
Harker convinces Alba to return to Chile to learn the story, long hidden from
her by her mother, of her father’s disappearance under Pinochet. As America
grows more distrusting of diversity, Alba commits her art to the protection of
the environment and to a more inclusive meaning of family and belonging while
she and her husband, John, strive to learn Harker’s hidden past and include him
in their lives before it is too late. Rooted in the Mormon heritage of Utah but
hemispheric in its reach, American Fork is a story of restoration and healing
in the wake of loss and betrayal.
Handley writes and researches on the
intersection between religion, literature, and the environment, with a special
interest in postcolonial literature. His scholarship has also focused on the
environmental values of Mormonism and he frequently speaks publicly in his home
state of Utah about environmental values and issues. In addition to his
scholarly writing, he writes creatively. This includes his environmental
memoir, Home Waters, which won the 2011 prize for best memoir from the
Association of Mormon Letters.
In Tales from Pleasant Grove, Steven Peck
creates a breathtaking collection of short stories, harnessing the winds of a
wild creativity with gale-force unpredictability. This book is a wonder and a
marvel. The imaginative breadth and speculative depth available here brings to
life dragons, fairies, witches, demons, and ghost, all set within a western
landscape that in its own way proves just as amazing and other worldly as the
fantastic elements at play within Peck's work.
Steven L. Peck is an evolutionary biologist, blogger,
poet, and novelist. He is the author of Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats, The
Scholar of Moab, A Short Stay in Hell, and The Rifts of Rime, as well as
collection of short stories titled Wandering Realities. He has published two
volumes of poetry, Incorrect Astronomy and Fly Fishing in Middle Earth, and two
volumes of non-fiction reflections, Science the Key to Theology and Evolving
Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist. He is a blogger at By Common Consent,
and can also be found online at www.stevepeckniche.com.
This event is made possible with support from
The City Library, City Art, and Utah Humanities.
Most featured readings are followed by an open reading.
The event is free and open to the public. City Art is sponsored by the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Zoo, Arts, and Parks, X-mission, and audience donations.