As part of the Smithsonian traveling exhibit Crossroads: Change in Rural America currently showing at the Student Center on the USU Eastern campus, Fiction writer Karin Anderson will read from her work-in-progress Things I Didn’t Do set in Carbon and Emery counties on Thursday, February 8 at 7 pm in the Alumni Room. Refreshments will be served, and door prizes will be given away.
Karin Anderson’s project as a fiction writer is to create characters from distinct places and cultural pressures. Fiction is a way to enter worldviews that are not entirely her own, finding sympathy and humanity among people who live far more meaningful lives than memes, headlines, and politics portray. Her work is grounded in the arid American West, especially Utah. She is drawn to stories that reveal more than we expect or intend, with meanings that gain possibility with every exchange. “We can insist that our stories have fixed and moralized meanings – tight corrals imprisoning captive creatures –” she says, “or we can open the gates and let the horses run. And return, and run again.”
The author believes that powerful stories are crucial to stepping into our futures with courage and grace. She will read brief passages from her recent novel What Falls Away, set in Utah Valley, and an answering work in progress, Things I Didn’t Do, set in Juab, Carbon, and Emery Counties.
KARIN ANDERSON is a gardener, writer, mother, wanderer, and heretic, as well as the author of What Falls Away and Before Us Like a Land of Dreams. She is also co-editor of the anthologies Blossom as the Cliffrose: Mormon Legacies and the Beckoning Wild and Utah Lake Stories: Reflection on a Living Landmark. Her work has appeared in Dialogue, Quarter After Eight, Western Humanities Review, Sunstone, Saranac Review, American Literary Review, and Fiddleback. A former professor of English at Utah Valley University, she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and holds degrees from Utah State University, Brigham Young University, and the University of Utah. She hails from the Great Basin.