(upbeat intro music) - The annual Utah Humanities Book Festival is Utah's oldest and only statewide book festival.

Its become Utah's signature literary event.

Program Manager, Kase Johnstun, is here to tell us more about this year's festival.

Hi Kase.

- [Kase] Hi.

- So I know you've, you've made some changes from past years, so let's start with what those changes are.

- [Kase] Okay.

The biggest change really is that in the past it's been September and October.

This year it's solely October 1st to October 31st to correspond with National Book month.

So kind of put those together.

- [Mary] Okay.

Okay.

And tell me how many events there are and where they'll be.

- Sure.

So our goal is really to spread this across the entire state.

There's going to, currently, and this is where we want to cap it, there's 70 events across the state in 31 days.

And that's from St. George to Logan and from, you know, Brigham City to Kanab and all the way across the state, all, all seven regions.

- [Mary] Wow.

- Yeah.

- That is a lot of planning.

- It is.

It's a lot of planning.

Yeah.

(laughter) - Yeah.

So who are some of the authors that you'll be highlighting this year?

- Oh, well, we'll start, our first event is October 3rd and it's a really big event.

It is two Diné Navajo writers, Tacey Atsitty and Stacie Denetsosie.

And that'll be in Ogden at the Weber County Main Library.

It's a rail town reading is what the, what it's called.

And that's where we're starting.

And that's a, that's a big event for us too, just because we really want to highlight the Diné Navajo writers in our, in our community.

- Ah, that's a great plan.

That's a great plan.

So, so who else, who else are you highlighting?

- Sure.

We're, we're bringing in Rubén Degollado from Texas.

His new book, "The Family Izquierdo", is a fabulous book.

Rebecca Clarren from Portland is coming in.

She's writing, "The Cost of Free Land", which is, which tackles the intersection between where people from the Jewish tradition were left Russia because of the pilgrims, and then we're given Lakota land.

So there's this contradiction in her history that she's grappling with.

Those are two of our bigger authors that we're bringing in this year.

- [Mary] Wow.

Great.

- Yeah.

But we have poets and writers and novelists and children's book all the way through.

- Wonderful.

Well, thank you for putting it all together.

It's a lot of work and thanks for being here.

- No, thank you so much.

- And if you'd like to know more about the Utah Humanities Book Festival events and there are a lot of them throughout the state they run through October, go to utahhumanities.org.

That's utahhumanities.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching Contact.

(upbeat outro music) - Local events, arts, culture.

It's what brings us together.

Hi, I'm Mary Dickson.

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