WEBER—THE CONTEMPORARY WEST
AN INTERNATIONAL, PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL SPOTLIGHTING PERSONAL NARRATIVE, COMMENTARY, FICTION, NONFICTION, AND POETRY THAT SPEAKS TO THE ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE OF THE AMERICAN WEST AND BEYOND.
CURRENT ISSUE
VOL. 40, NO. 1
(Fall 2023)
CONTENTS
Conversation
Kathryn MacKay & Brad Meltzer; David W. Hartwig & Keith Hamilton Cobb; Michiko Nakashima-Lizarazo & Ayana Mathis; Michael Wutz & Viet Thanh Nguyen
Art of the American West Sub-Focus
Conversations from Nan Seymour, Elpitha Tsoutsounakis, & Hikmet Sidney Loe; Angelika Pagel & Susan Bingham; The Art of Maynard Dixon; Essay from Hikmet Sidney Loe
South Asia Sub-Focus
Conversations from Sri Craven & Farah Ali; Sri Craven & Nawaaz Ahmed; Essay from Feroza Jussawalla; Poetry from Feroza Jussawalla, Jaspal Kaur Singh, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, Sri Craven; Fiction from Samina Hadi-Tabassum
Poetry
Donna Emerson, Linds Sanders, Cathryn Essinger, Carol L. Deering
Essay
Daniel R. Schwarz
“Readers and writers should not deceive themselves that literature changes the world. Literature changes the world of readers and writers, but literature does not change the world until people get out of their chairs, go out in the world, and do something to transform the conditions of which the literature speaks.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
HIGHLIGHTS
FEATURED
COMMENTARY:
READING THE WEST Fall 2023
The National Park Service posts a series: “Defining the Southwest.” It explains that. . . the Southwest is a place without boundaries—a land with its own style and its own pace—a land that ultimately defies a single definition. The geographical boundaries of the Southwest are so difficult to pin down, in part,
because of the variability of both ancient and modern cultures in the region.
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CONVERSATION:
Angelika Pagel & Susan Bingham
Fall 2023
"California-born Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) traveled extensively in the American (South)West during the first thirty-plus years of the twentieth century. Disillusioned, as so many artists and writers were, by the rapidly growing industrial society and its accompanying modernity, he was drawn to the epic landscapes of the West and its Indigenous Peoples. ."
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Phyllis Barber, author
Katharine Coles, University of Utah
Diana Joseph, Minnesota State University
Nancy Kline, author & translator
Delia Konzett, University of New Hampshire
Kathryn Lindquist, Weber State University
Fred Marchant, Suffolk University
Madonne Miner, Weber State University
Felicia Mitchell, Emory & Henry College
Julie Nichols, Utah Valley University
Tara Powell, University of South Carolina
Bill Ransom, Evergreen State College
Walter L. Reed, Emory University
Scott P. Sanders, University of New Mexico
Kerstin Schmidt, Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Daniel R. Schwarz, Cornell University
Andreas Ströhl, Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, South Africa
James Thomas, author
Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, author
Melora Wolff, Skidmore College
EDITOR
Michael Wutz / mwutz@weber.edu
MANAGING EDITOR
Kristin Jackson / kristinjackson@weber.edu