Literary Panels
Writers from across the nonfiction spectrum discuss tools of the trade to weave facts, story, and character to create impact that matters.
Panelists: Robin Patten, Lynne Spriggs O’Connor, Mark Sundeen
Panel moderated by Kirsten Allen
As publisher and co-executive director, Kirsten Johanna Allen directs acquisitions, editing, production, and marketing for Torrey House Press. Since co-founding the press, Kirsten has steered THP from its earliest inklings to publish conservation through literature to become the powerful platform for books and ideas about the natural world and the West that it is today. Kirsten holds a BA from Westminster College and an MPH from the University of Utah. She lives with a pair of cats and her spouse, Mark Bailey, in Salt Lake City and Torrey, Utah.
This panel will bring together writers, filmmakers, and activists to discuss river restoration across the western U.S., with a particular focus on the Colorado River’s Glen Canyon and the Clark Fork Watershed in Montana. Panelists will explore impacts to Western rivers, but also their remarkable ability to recover when given the opportunity.
Panelists: Mark Sundeen, Brian Chaffin, Diego Riley, Will Buckley
Panel moderated by Zak Podmore
Zak Podmore is an award-winning author and journalist who has spent more than a decade writing about water and conservation issues in the western United States. He is the author of two books published by Torrey House Press, Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West (2019) and Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River (2024). Zak is the recipient of the Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers award and was the Entrada Institute’s writer-in-residence in 2023. Until recently, Zak was the southern Utah reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune. He lives in Bluff, Utah.
“World-changing fiction” might sound like a tall order, especially in this season of global tumult. But most writers and readers can recall a book, or many, that changed their world in a crucial way. We believe that changing small worlds can change the big one—human by human, at the grassroots, where it matters most. Four richly talented, very different authors will speak to the ways fiction can change worlds—and so the world.
Panelists: Bethany Turner, C C Harrison, Meredith Blevins, Stacie Shannon Denetsosie, Rusty Munn
Karin Anderson draws from generational roots to portray characters, landscapes, and perplexities of the arid American West. A recent life of on-hand parenting and university teaching gave her enough to write about forever. She is the author of the novels Before Us Like a Land of Dreams, What Falls Away, and Things I Didn’t Do, co-editor of the anthologies Utah Lake Stories and Blossom as the Cliffrose. She publishes primarily with Torrey House Press. Currently she wrangles apparitions and leftover pets, plants tomatoes, and re-composes in Salt Lake City, Utah.
What does the future look like? What could it look like? Malyssa Egge, the ACLU’s Indigenous Justice Organizer, discusses Beyond the Glittering World: An Anthology of Indigenous Feminisms and Futurisms with editor Stacie Shannon Denetsosie and contributors Shaina Nez and Cheyenne Williams as they explore how fiction can help explore our hopes, dreams, and fears about what lies ahead.
Panelists: Shaina Nez, Cheyenne Williams, Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
Panel moderated by Malyssa Egge
Malyssa Egge, based in Bluff, Utah, is the Indigenous Justice Organizer for the ACLU of Utah. Malyssa has spent over a decade working with tribal, state, and federal programs as well as private grants throughout the northern Navajo Nation and San Juan County, Utah. She completed a bachelors degree in Psychology and Native American Studies and a masters in Rural Sociology with an emphasis in Native American Community Development. Malyssa is fascinated by the plant kingdom and concepts of food sovereignty. She enjoys the desert’s petrichor, the brilliant night sky, syncopated rhythm, and judging high school speech and debate
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