The Utah Humanities Book Festival is celebrating its 25th year, and we’re delighted to once again partner with this amazing program for many of our events this fall—in the store, at other venues, and online. Join us, and check out their full calendar of events here! |
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About the book: Who deserves human rights? The answer to this question is the crux of all moral and political action in society, and defines our character as individuals and as nations. Murphy and her co-authors seek to answer this vital question in this accessible and succinct handbook on the Consistent Life Ethic, a moral philosophy whose central principle is that each and every human being has inherent dignity, and therefore deserves to live free from violence. Rehumanize includes a digestible yet systematic analysis of the history, ethics, and public policy surrounding modern issues of dehumanization, and casts a rehumanizing vision of a world beyond violence. Beyond the confines of political parties or religious exclusion, the founder of Rehumanize International communicates an aspiration to an inclusive ideal of a consistent movement of every human standing for every human.
Aimee Murphy founded Rehumanize International (then known as Life Matters Journal) in 2011. After a personal conversion to the cause against abortion as a teen, she embraced the Consistent Life Ethic. Through her work with Rehumanize International, Aimee is reaching people all over the globe with the consistent message of human rights and is creating and engaging in effective dialogue to change hearts and minds. Aimee Murphy was the recipient of the Susan B. Anthony List Young Leader Award in 2014 for her trailblazing pro-life leadership. Her work with Rehumanize has been featured in such media outlets as The Atlantic, The New York Times, VICE News, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Slate, MSNBC, and many more. After 10 years of leading the organization through many changes and expansions, Aimee stepped down from her role as Executive Director in 2020 and now serves as the Director of Publications. She lives in Pittsburgh with her profoundly supportive husband, their dog, and (in the spirit of radical hospitality) whichever friends wander into the Murphy household.
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Join us for a literary Kaffeeklatsch! Books, coffee, snacks, and chats every Tuesday morning at MyAmour Café, located directly across from our first floor entrance.
HELD WEEKLY ON TUESDAYS
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About the book: In Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana, Michael Martone places steady fingers on the arrhythmic pulse of the Flyover as he conjures Winesburg, Indiana, a fictional town and all of its inhabitants' lyric philosophies, tales of the mundane, and the sensation of being "lost" in the heart of the heart of the country. These stories may capture lives of quiet desperation, but in so doing, they create a kind of hobbled poetry in the spontaneous sketches of the ordinary made extraordinary, the regular irregularities, the familiar knocked off-balance with a glancing blow. With undeniable humor, intelligent quirk, and earnest longing for a pastoral passing into the annals of deep Midwestern time, Michael Martone crafts an unforgettable panoply of characters whose perspectives invite us to alternatively interpret our own commonplaces.
Michael Martone was born and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He attended Butler University and graduated from Indiana University. He holds the MA from The Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University. His most recent books are The Complete Writings of Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone, The Moon Over Wapakoneta, and Brooding. He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
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About the book: TOKYO is an incisive, shape-shifting tour de force, a genre-bending mix of lyric prose, science fiction, horror, and visual collage exploring the erotic undercurrents of American perceptions of Japanese culture and identity. By turns noir, surreal, and clinical in its language and style, TOKYO employs metaphors of consumption, disease, theater, gender fluidity, monstrousness, and ecological disaster in intertwined accounts touching on matters of cultural appropriation, fiction's powerful capacity to produce immersive realities, and the culturally corrupting late capitalist excesses that entangle both the United States and Japan.
Michael Mejia is the author of the novels TOKYO and Forgetfulness, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, he is editor-in-chief of Western Humanities Review, co-founding editor of Ninebark Press, and a professor of English at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his wife and their Jack Russell Terrier.
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We're excited to host Levi Rogers, author of Utah! A Novel. Utah! seeks to show the true diversity, beauty, and yes, sometimes peculiar, aspects of one of the most misunderstood states.
About the book: Fleeing from ever present wildfires and the threat of the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupting, Lee, Becca, and their daughter Analise embark on a road-trip through the state of Utah to a wedding in Zion National Park. Set in the not-too-distant-future, Utah! is a novel about climate change and the intricacies of relationships-between family, partners, religious structures, nature, and the American West. Featuring a litany of intriguing Utah residents including ex and current Mormons, doomsday preppers, military vets, Presbyterian ministers, and Colombian housewives, these characters eventually find their paths crossing in violence, disaster, and friendship. Through desert islands, climbing gyms, beer bars, suburbia, mountains, coffee shops, long drives, and mass shootings, Utah! seeks to show the true diversity, beauty, and yes, sometimes peculiar, aspects of one of the most misunderstood states. It's a novel about the smoldering darkness beneath the surface of our individual selves and society...and what happens when we refuse to acknowledge our past transgressions. Utah! is a slow burn of a novel that ends with an explosive finish.
Levi Rogers is a Colorado native, writer, and former coffee roaster currently based in the land of the Chinook and Multnomah people. He has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University Los Angeles and a Bachelors of English from the University of Utah.
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Join Catherine and the crafters of WBW in the store for casual bookish chinwags. All crafts and crafters welcome.
HELD EVERY 2ND & 4TH WEDNESDAY
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Please join us for a discussion and fundraiser to support House of Heart. Diana Ragsdale will be here to discuss and share Loose Cannons: A Memoir of Mania and Mayhem in a Mormon Family, her debut memoir. It is a harrowing and hilarious saga spanning more than 60 years of multigenerational trauma and dysfunction—and the spiritual power it took to overcome it all.
About the book: Diana Cannon-Ragsdale was born into a Mormon dynasty, but growing up at the mercy of her mother's depression and father's undiagnosed schizophrenia, Diana and her five siblings were left to fend for themselves as their mom and dad rotated in and out of psychiatric hospitals and police custody. In 1966, Diana's mother left her family and the Mormon Church to start a new relationship with a woman, sending Diana's father into a tailspin. Eventually, after several divorces and while raising three children of her own, Diana reconnected with her estranged mother and inherited a lifetime's worth of her journals. After decades spent searching for answers, her mother's writing about swingers' parties, sexual abuse, ancient wounds and broken attempts at happiness reframed everything Diana thought she knew about her family and herself.
Diana Cannon-Ragsdale is an author, retired physical therapist, and mental health advocate for survivors of abusive and dysfunctional families. In retirement, she has dedicated herself to travel and creativity. Today, she lives happily in Salt Lake City, Utah. Loose Cannons is her first book.
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This will be in-person and virtual. This event is made possible with support from the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities and Utah Humanities.
A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.
Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color.
Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.
Meghan O’Rourke is the author of The Long Goodbye and the poetry collections Sun in Days, Once, and Halflife. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and other awards, she is the editor of The Yale Review. Her writing appears in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and more.
Location:
Room 2600
Eccles Health Sciences Education Building
University of Utah, SLC
Virtual Access:
Zoom: https://utah-health.zoom.us/j/91309405276
Meeting ID: 91309405276
Passcode: 212356
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Weller Book Works Collectors' Book Salons feature libations and treats, social time for conversation and a special deal on rare books that is only available to guests. Books are bridges across the divides of time and space and like they embrace the diversity of the human experience, we try to keep our treats, speakers and deals diverse which is maybe another word for unpredictable.
This month's Collectors' Chat will be provided by charming bibliophile, man of the world, and CBS habitué Gary Mackelprang. We don't yet know what he'll speak about but we know it will be interesting.
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A message from Tony Weller
I believe in the power of environment and consider costume a piece of it. In that spirit I use our salons to play with attire and encourage guests to dress up, or down, or weird, or playfully, to help our sensibilities out of predictable zones.
Glasses filled at 6:30 and we muster for the Collectors’ Chat at 7:15 in our Rare Book Room. The event has no digital component.
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Come visit us!
SUNDAY 12-5
MONDAY-THURSDAY 11-7
FRIDAY & SATURDAY 10-9
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Can't make it to the store?
Support your local indie from home!
Order online or by phone, then pick up in-store or curbside! We also ship!
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Give us a call at 801-328-2586.
Browse our entire inventory of new, used and rare books on Biblio.com.
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Thanks for supporting your local, independent bookstore!
Weller Book Works | 801-328-2586
Store hours: Sunday 12PM–5PM | Monday–Thursday 11AM–7PM | Friday & Saturday 10AM–9PM
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