Although it has been in the same location since the early 1930s, the Art Barn, nestled in Reservoir Park, remains one of the best unknown locations on campus.
Small with faded gray paint, the building itself is nothing to get excited about. But, the smiling people and intellectually stimulating activities happening inside the heavy, wooden doors continue to inspire artists in various fields and touch audiences lucky enough to attend.
The Salt Lake City Arts Council, the U’s Department of English and Creative Writing Program and other various organizations within the Salt Lake City community help sponsor the Guest Writer Series. Administered by professor Jackie Osherow, the director of the writing program, and Daniel Takeshi Krause, the vice-presidential administrative fellow, the series has survived 16 years, and it has provided about 180 contemporary, award-winning prose writers and poets from across the country a platform to share their work. Both the reading and the luncheon are free, and refreshments are provided.
Diverse backgrounds, distinct lifestyles and completely contrasting points of view converge together at the Art Barn, creating a unique and unparalleled learning space. The Guest Writer Series not only offers audiences the opportunity to hear writers read their work, but it also offers audience members the chance to sit down with writers and other people in the community to discuss each reading.
Susan Steinberg, an acclaimed professor at the University of San Francisco, will be featured at the next reading Thursday at 7 p.m. Steinberg is the author of three short story collections: “Spectacle,” “Hydroplane” and “The End of Free Love.” In 2010 she received the United States Artists Ziporyn Fellow in Literature and was the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a National Magazine Award.
At the Thursday reading, Steinberg will share a short story or two from her new novel “Spectacle.” These stories do away entirely with indulgent metaphors, lengthy descriptions, major plot elements and, in some cases, punctuation. Instead, Steinberg carves her stories down to the bone, which allows her unique voice and fearless choices in structure to shine through. The stories resonate off one another, repeating words, phrases and plot elements. This technique stitches the stories together like a patchwork quilt. Each one is unique and able to stand on its own, yet poignant and eye opening when read as a whole.
Listening to Steinberg read her novel starkly contrasts with picking up the book and reading it alone.
“It always depends on the piece, but reading work aloud gives a piece another life, in a sense, and allows the listener to appreciate [and/or] understand the work from a new perspective,” Steinberg said. “The author can definitely make new discoveries about the work from engaging in that performance.”
Steinberg said programs such as the Guest Writer Series help writers by “giving them new venues in which to share their work or listen to new work and by putting them in touch with other writers and readers. [They also] offer writers the opportunity to participate in a greater conversation about writing.”
The Art Barn’s Guest Writer Series places importance on the creative as well as the academic. Putting people in direct contact with the artists themselves, the series hopes to expand community participation in the arts and other humanity fields. Each reading aims to inspire individuals to listen, question and then discuss alongside brilliant minds from the U and the Salt Lake City community.