Utah News

Western Book Roundup

Each year readers and writers gather to celebrate the written word at book festivals, fairs, and writing conferences throughout the West. Although there are a few spring festivals, everything really begins to pick up in June, and the schedule remains busy through November.

The offerings vary from those that concentrate on helping writers improve their craft, such as the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s retreat in Grand Lake, Colo. (July 10th-15th), to those that introduce writers to readers through panels, readings, and book signings, such as the Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula (October 5th-7th). Some, such as the Aspen Summer Words Festival (June 19th-24th), combine workshops and readings. The workshops charge fees, but plenty of the festivals are free to attend, including the Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula and the Equality State Book Fair in Casper. Most workshops are already accepting applications for this year.

I’ve updated the Book Festivals of the West map with this year’s information when it was available. Please let me know if there are any more events to add or update—I’ll even throw this open for events in California and Texas. New West will run reports from the festivals again this year—we already have correspondents lined up for the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, Aspen Summer Words, and the Montana Festival of the Book, and are looking for more contributors.

News Briefs

Utah legislators hope a new law will keep a steady stream of film productions working in the state, according to the Daily Universe at Brigham Young University. The new law offers a partial rebate on in-state expenses made during the filming of the production, as well as other incentives designed to coax filmmakers to the state.

The filmmakers behind recent movies like “True Grit” and “Cowboys and Aliens” eyed Utah but later opted to film in New Mexico, the Universe reports.

NEW WEST FEATURE

On Father’s Day 2007, 11-year-old Samuel Ives was camping with his mother, stepfather and brother in Utah’s American Fork Canyon.

In the middle of the night, the parents heard Samuel screaming “Help me!” from his room in their tent. They awoke to find the tent slashed, the boy missing. At first, they believed someone had kidnapped him. Later, they discovered a black bear had ripped open the tent and dragged him to his death – the
first known killing of a human by a black bear in Utah history.

The same bear, it turned out, had raided the same campsite just 12 hours earlier. The Forest Service should have warned them, his natural parents Kevan Francis and Rebecca Ives argued.

Last week, a federal judge agreed, and ordered the federal government to pay them nearly $2 million.

NEW WEST FEATURE

To boosters, it’s almost a magical elixir for the world’s energy woes. To opponents, it’s more akin to snake oil. Even more than most other fossil fuels, oil shale meets with a sharply divided reaction, and after two weeks of public hearings across Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, federal officials have received an earful from both sides.

But beyond the bluster, those in the middle feel left in a vacuum of straight talk.

“I would like to see some sort of document that includes the facts, from a source that doesn’t have an agenda,” Jim Yellico told Bureau of Land Management officials at a meeting in Rifle. Colo., on Tuesday.

Getting straight facts, though, is a challenge.

Western Book Roundup

Helen Thorpe‘s Colorado Book Award-winning Just Like Us is out in paperback now, and it includes an update about the lives of her subjects, four young Mexican women who grew up in Denver, two with U.S. citizenship and two without. On May 12, Thorpe will speak at the Arvada Public Library, and on May 15 she will participate in the Dean’s Forum at St. John’s Cathedral in Denver. In October, Just Like Us will be the featured book for One Book One Town in Carbondale, Colo.

• Brady Udall‘s excellent novel The Lonely Polygamist is out in paperback now too. Udall will appear at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, along with Cristina García, Gary Ferguson, and Stephanie Elizondo Griest from June 23-26. The conference is open for registration now. (Check back on New West in late June for David Abrams‘ report on the conference.)

Also in the Roundup: Robin Black is this year’s Lighthouse Fly-By Writer, the new Mountain West Poetry Series, lit champ Jennifer Egan to headline the Literary Sojourn in Steamboat Springs, and Women Writing the West conference tickets are on sale now.

New West Feature

In 1989, energy activist Amory Lovins noticed a simple typo — “negawatt” for “megawatt” — in a report. That simple mistake, thought Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, captured the essence of what he believed should be done. Instead of building new power plants, he advocated using existing electrical generation more efficiently.

That idea of negawatts continues to gain purchase in the West as investor-owned utilities, which are overseen by state utility commissions, begin to bend down the growth in electrical demand even while earning profits.

Last week, for example, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission set energy-saving goals for Xcel Energy, the state’s largest provider of electricity and gas. The PUC specified that Xcel should aim to institute electrical savings equivalent to 1.14 percent of sales beginning in 2012, escalating to 1.68 percent of sales in 2020. The PUC, in its written opinion, called these targets “properly ambitious yet realistically achievable.”

The Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, an activist group, estimates that if Xcel succeeds, the savings in Colorado will shave electrical use by four billion kilowatt hours per year in 2020. That’s unlikely to close power plants, but it’s could eliminate the need to build a 575-megawatt power plant for base-load generation, says Howard Geller, the group’s founder.

Guest Column

For years, I’ve worked to safeguard some of the West’s best hunting and fishing spots from poorly planned oil and gas development on public lands. Today, a new and surprising challenge is emerging for management of these lands: large-scale, commercial, renewable energy development.

Solar and wind energy have the potential to transform America, creating great jobs and providing a reliable source of clean, domestic energy. Yet despite its many virtues, utility-scale renewable energy requires massive infrastructure that could adversely affect the West’s public lands and sporting heritage, if it isn’t done right from the start.

Fortunately, we have decades of experience with oil and gas siting, enabling us to responsibly pursue siting renewable energy on public lands. Smart, common-sense solutions can foster a smooth transition to clean energy, sustain our hunting and fishing traditions, and avoid costly red-tape delays, litigation and habitat damage that often characterize public-lands oil and gas development in the past.

This month marks the end of public comment on a document that will guide solar energy development in six Western states: California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona. This document will set the precedent for large-scale renewable energy development in the West. We must get it right. Two primary alternatives are being considered: the Department of the Interior’s and Department of Energy’s preferred alternative calls for creating 24 “solar energy zones” and enabling development on an additional 22 million acres of BLM land in these six states.

News Briefs

Managers at a 70-acre wild horse holding center near Salt Lake City are defending the facility after being accused of keeping the animals in deplorable conditions, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

The Cloud Foundation, which advocates for preserving wild horses on public lands, posted a YouTube video on April 4 showing the animals standing in what appeared to be deep mud and manure. The group called for a probe into conditions at all Bureau of Land Management holding facilities.

Investigators from the Bureau of Land Management and Humane Society of Utah told the Tribune they found no evidence of abuse or neglect at the facility, though they noted the holding pens were muddier than usual due to recent snowfall.

Western Book Roundup

Boise’s Anthony Doerr continued his winning streak last weekend, collecting the The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for his story “The Deep,” which came with a £30,000 prize. (Last month he won the $20,000 Story Prize for his collection Memory Wall). Doerr spoke with the Boise Weekly just before the win, and noted that the award ceremony was to be held in the Great Hall of Christ Church College at Oxford University, “where they film the great hall of Hogwarts.” It’s like I’ve been telling you these past months--literary Boise is en fuego.

• Craig Johnson reported in his newsletter that filming will begin this month on a television pilot based on his Walt Longmire mysteries. Johnson notes that the crew is filming in the “Las Vegas/Taos/Santa Fe area of New Mexico, since it was deemed that Wyoming’s weather was too unstable for shooting a series and had too much snow to appear to be spring.” The show, for Warner Horizon and A&E, will be called “Longmire.” Johnson explains if the pilot gets picked up, they will film a dozen episodes for the first season, “borrowing chunks of the novels, but following their own tales because of the amount of stories they need to tell and the time constraints in which to tell them.” (Via Wyoming Arts Blog.)

Also in the Roundup: Chris Abani speaks in Utah, Western readers snap up eBooks, and Philip Connors visits the Boulder Book Store.

Rocky Mountain Headlines Roundup

Senators and cousins Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and Tom Udall (D-New Mexico), two members of a family nicknamed the “Kennedys of the West,” have different takes on some topical issues, Politico reported this week. While both Udalls have led remarkably similar political careers, Mark recently voted to ban earmarks and has generally acted more aggressively than Tom when it comes to tackling the federal budget deficit.

Despite their differences on fiscal policy, they remain close. In the Politico piece, they attributed their bond in part to having shared an unusual experience while mountain climbing: