Zachary Asher is the author of gone bird in the glass hours (winner of the 2019 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, University of Utah Press) and Scarlight (Ravenna Press, 2014). He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University, where he was a founding editor of Nashville Review. Today he lives and teaches in Los Angeles.

Alberto Ríos has authored numerous books of poetry and prose, including Not Go Away is My Name (Copper Canyon Press, 2020); The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2002), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Whispering to Fool the Wind (Sheep Meadow Press, 1982), which won the 1981 Walt Whitman Award; and the novel The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart (Blue Moon and Confluence Press, 1984), which won the Western States Book Award. Ríos has received the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2013 was named Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate. He is the director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

The Agha Shahid Ali Prize for Poetry is awarded annually, and the winning manuscript is published by the University of Utah Press.

Each year, the Guest Writers Series at the University of Utah brings distinguished authors to Salt Lake City. Our goal is to provide our community with an opportunity to engage in a dynamic, educational and inspiring relationship with literature. We aim to bring in a diverse array of voices and perspectives, and to provide a platform for an enriching dialogue between our authors and the audience. All events are free and open to the public, and this year are held on Zoom Webinar.

This project received funding from the U of U English Department; the U of U Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs; Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, and Parks program; and Utah Humanities. Utah Humanities empowers groups and individuals to improve their communities through active engagement in the humanities. This project is also supported in part by Utah Arts & Museums, with funding from the State of Utah and the National Endowment for the Arts.