Elk River Arts & Lectures will host a presentation by Salt Lake City author and Peabody-award winning NPR radio producer Scott Carrier in the final lecture of its fall series on Saturday, November 2, at 7 p.m.
Carrier’s work spans genres and defies categorization. As a radio producer, he’s explored issues ranging from war to polygamy to recipes for morel mushrooms. His first book, Running After Antelope, is a memoir that juxtaposes his interviews from This American Life with his personal psychological disintegration, all held together by his obsession with attempts to outrun a pronghorn antelope. In his latest book, Prisoner of Zion, Carrier draws on his years as a war correspondent to examine post-September 11 Middle Eastern politics in the context of his own experiences growing up as a non-Mormon in America’s Zion, Salt Lake City.
“I went to meet the foreign enemy first-hand,” he writes, “as a fellow human being, in order to find out what it’s like in their world. Then I studied the enemy here at home. I looked within my own culture to find the source of our fear of others. Then I turned inward and confronted my own fears. I came to the conclusion that fear itself is the problem and that it’s everywhere—all around us and inside us as well. The stories in this book are an attempt to look at the fear and move toward it rather than away from it.”
Livingston author Doug Peacock, who has worked with Carrier for more than two decades, calls him a “geek genius,” for the unconventional insight Carrier brings to his interviews. Peacock and Carrier will also meet with local high school students as part of Elk River Arts & Lectures’ school outreach program.
The event will take place at Elk River Books and is sponsored by the Murray Hotel. The reading is free, and will be followed by a reception and signing. More information is available at elkriverarts.org.
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