WEBER—THE CONTEMPORARY WEST

VOL. 42, NO. 2 

(Spring/Summer 2026)

CONTENTS

Conversation
Sri Craven & Yashica Dutt; Suhasini Vincent & Yara Zgheib; Jim Jacobs & Alex Zhang; Sarah Brew & Alice Boyd; Hal Crimmel & Bill Reed; Courtney Craggett & Bret Anthony Johnston; Ben Kruger-Robbins & Julio Torres 

Art by Suzanne Sbarge

Poetry

Zach Gomez, Angelika Brewer, Maureen Clark, William Snyder, Georgia Tiffany, Ron McFarland

Fiction

Kent Nelson, Kevin Holdsworth, and Taylor Brown

Essay

Samuel Lorraine Goldsmith, Shaun T. Griffin, Brooke Stanish, and L. Annette Binder

BROWSE THE ISSUE

“Most people think that if you’re really familiar with something, it’s going to make it easier to write about it. In reality, it makes writing more difficult when you have personal experience in a given place. I’m constantly trying to imagine details, or pieces of language, that will animate a place from the point of view of someone who’s never been there. For me, that’s incredibly difficult. It takes an extraordinary amount of time and many, many failed attempts. But, the work is necessary, because place does determine story. It determines character.”

—Bret Anthony Johnston, Weber—The Contemporary West, 2026

COMMENTARY:

Reading The West Spring/Summer 2026

"Utah’s first ski lodge—the Alta Lodge in Little Cottonwood Canyon—a half hour from Salt Lake City, [was] financed by the Denver and Rio Grande. Also, in operation in 1939-40 near the lodge was a chairlift financed by Salt Lake City businessmen, cobbled together from long-unused mine hoists and other scavenged mining equipment, but it ran only fitfully until the 1940s. . ."                                                                                                    

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