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Karin Anderson (born 1962) was raised primarily in Alpine, Utah, coming of age in a high season of Cold War politics, Watergate, the Federal Wilderness Act, the Gilmore and Bundy sagas, shag hairstyles, local vilification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and hamburger casseroles. She graduated from Utah State University in 1984, completed a Masters Degree in English from Brigham Young University in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Utah in 2003.

It can’t be hard to surmise that her writing is primarily set in Utah and the Great Basin: her work turns toward the paradoxes of generational time, wrenched and wrested portrayals of “home,” obscure cultural and personal histories, dismantled mythologies, and the impossible meanings of desert and stone. Her recent novel, Before Us Like a Land of Dreams, follows a disheartened mother traveling an evocative route through the sites of her arid Western ancestry. As her narration fades, the dead speak their stories directly. They give no answers, but conjure vivid moments set in iconic (and diminishing) American places.

Anderson has published work in American Literary Review, Western Humanities Review, Sunstone, Saranac Review, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Quarter After Eight, and with Signature Books, Fiddleblack, and Torrey House Press.

Currently residing in Salt Lake City, she rides the commuter to the time warp of her home county to teach literature, composition, and creative writing at Utah Va ... view more »

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