Events for Live Stream

🪧 About the Event: On 23 October 1966—exactly sixty years ago—Spence Mendenhall was found shot to death in his Salt Lake City home in the Avenues. His murder remains unsolved. Spence was a Gay man who was secretly out to some people but largely lived a closeted life, and his death has since been recognized as a hate crime. Julian Hendrix will be reading excerpts from a work in progress exploring queer communities and relationships through the connections and disjunctions shared between his great-uncle and himself. Between his unsolved murder in 1966 and the present day, a political project based in LGBT visibility - Harvey Milk's "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" - has transformed queer experiences, both our relationships with each other and with our broader communities. Julian’s project focuses on the different ways LGBT people are known or not known among our queer community and our families as well as the ways in which visibility has and has not transformed the kinds of violence we face. 🎙️ About the Speaker: Julian Hendrix is a writer and historian based in Chicago. Spence Mendenhall is his great-uncle. 
Remote Attendance Zoom link: https://utah.zoom.us/j/82528976167 Meeting ID: 825 2897 6167 Passcode: 185309 
Special thanks to Signature Books for allowing us to host this event in their space! 
Past lectures can be accessed on our YouTube channel or on the Berryman Lecture Series page.

An interview with the author, Stephen Carter! Join the Mildred Berryman Institute and Signature Books for a conversation with author Stephen Carter about his new book, Creature, a biography of queer Utah poet May Swenson—available to order here or to purchase at the event. Mildred Berryman Institute co-founder and board member Megan Weiss will interview Carter about Swenson’s life, work, sexuality, and complicated relationship with her Utah roots. One of the most celebrated American poets of the twentieth century, May Swenson was born in Logan, Utah, in 1919 and went on to build a distinguished literary career in New York. Her poetry explored desire, identity, the body, nature, and the complexities of human relationships, while her personal life included relationships with women that have become an increasingly important part of how her work is understood. Drawing on Creature, Carter and Weiss will explore Swenson’s life and legacy, her connection to Utah, and the place of queer experience in her poetry and biography. The conversation will offer an opportunity to consider a remarkable Utah-born writer whose life and work have much to tell us about the history of Queer life, creativity, and identity in the state. About Creature and May Swenson: Creature, by Stephen Carter, examines the life and work of May Swenson, the acclaimed twentieth-century American poet born in Logan, Utah, in 1919. Swenson became known for her inventive and sensuous poetry and spent much of her adult life in New York, where she developed relationships with women and participated in literary circles that shaped her career. Her work frequently explored desire, the body, gender, and the natural world, making her an important figure in the history of American poetry and a compelling subject for the study of Utah’s Queer history. 
💻 Remote Attendance Zoom link: https://utah.zoom.us/j/86729375988 Meeting ID: 867 2937 5988 Passcode: 657892