(upbeat music) - Utah Humanities Utah Book Awards honor works of outstanding literary merit by Utah authors.

And here with details about the program is manager, Kase Johnstun.

Hey, Kase.

- Hi.

- Welcome back.

- Oh, thank you.

- Always nice to have you and talk books.

- Yeah.

- So your book awards have been on hiatus for almost a decade.

- Almost a decade.

So when we ha when they come back, when we award them again in 2025, it'll be a full decade without the Utah Book Award, so.

- And that I know is one of the things you were interested in starting up again when you took this position.

- Yeah, when I took this position, I knew that as an author myself, that this was one thing that we really missed.

And we've heard in the community that as probably the most prestigious book award in the state, everybody wanted it back, wished it were back, and from what I hear so far, are really excited that it's coming back.

- Yeah, so let's talk about when submissions open, and like what categories, like all the details.

- Sure, so submissions open for the 2025 Utah Book Awards October 1st, 2024.

So this October.

That's what we're trying to get the word out about.

And we're gonna have seven genres, including poetry, illustrated, literary fiction, speculative fiction, nonfiction, memoir, so on and so forth.

That'll be open to most of our authors across the state.

- Okay, great.

And I know you've probably gotten a lot of entries.

In the past, they have, and I'm sure you're hoping for a lot this time.

- Yeah, we're hoping for a lot.

You know, I mean, I think our entry timeline is if you've published between January 1st, 2022 and October 1st, 2024.

So it's a two, basically a two and a half year open window for authors so that we can kind of go back a little bit and give them the opportunity in the last couple years, so.

- Oh, that's great.

And then how do people find out more info?

- utahhumanities.org.

We have a landing page there for the Utah Book Award.

There our eligibility requirements will be coming later in the year as we get closer to the open submission, but the open submission will be, again, will be October 1st, yeah.

- Great, great.

Well, thanks for bringing them back for all of us.

- Absolutely, we're really excited about it, so yeah.

- That's great.

- Okay, thanks for being here too.

- Yeah, thanks.

- And if you'd like to know more about the Utah Book Awards being back, it's the 2025 awards, submissions are open October 1st.

Just go to utahhumanities.org.

That's utahhumanities.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching Contact.

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