Please join us for the next Helicon West event, Thursday, October 24, 7:00
PM at the Logan Library, 255 North Main, in partnership with the Utah Book
Festival, featuring Shanan Ballam and Kirstin Scott.
Shanan Ballam is an adjunct instructor for Utah State University, where she
teaches poetry writing and fiction writing. She earned her MFA in Poetry
Writing from the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She is the author of the
chapbook The Red Riding Hood Papers (Finishing Line Press in 2010). Pretty
Marrow was a semi-finalist for the 2010 Brittingham and Polk Poetry Prizes,
the 2010 May Swenson Award, the 2010 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry, and the
2012 Louise Bogan Award; in 2012 it received first place in the Utah
Division of Arts and Museums Original Writing Contest, which was judged by
Sue Walker, Poet Laureate of Alabama.
Kirstin Scott¹s stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hayden¹s
Ferry Review, Sonora Review, Western Humanities Review, PANK, and elsewhere.
She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. Motherlunge is her first novel: Told with
dazzling prose, Motherlunge is a wry, luminous exploration of the legacy of
motherhood‹here, about the afflictions that may cycle through generations.
This is a thoroughly engaging novel, with wonderful turns of phrase in every
sentence, and its witty humor announces a welcome new voice in American
fiction, full of charm and tender wisdom.
The featured reading and discussion will be followed by an open microphone.
Creative writers are invited to share 7 minutes or less of their original
writing. Books will be for sale and Caffe Ibis coffee will be served.
See you there!
~Blog post by Caitlin Erickson
Helicon West 