Utah seems to punch above its weight in producing well-known young adult (YA) literature, with a variety of renowned authors claiming either residence in or influence from the state. Utah has been called home by National Book Award-finalist Sara Zarr, Newbery Medal-winning Virginia Sorensen, and The Great Brain series author John D. Fitgerald, as well as Orson Scott Card, Stephanie Meyer, and James Dashner, the authors of, respectively, the Ender’s Game series, the Twilight Saga, and the Maze Runner Saga.  

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, allowing for the mass removal of Japanese Americans along the West Coast of the United States for supposed national security reasons. This removal occurred first through waves of what the government called “voluntary evacuation,” then through the forced evacuation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans by the Wartime Civil Control Administration.

Orson Scott Card is one of Utah’s most decorated, popular, and controversial living authors.  Card believes strongly in writing for the widest possible audience, producing novels and short stories that are both accessible and morally challenging.  He is the only person to have won the Hugo and Nova awards for science fiction writing in back-to-back years, first for his novel, Ender’s Game (1985), and then for its sequel, Speaker for the Dead (1986).  

Terry Tempest Williams is arguably one of Utah's most influential living authors. In her essays, poetry, and memoirs, she uses her distinctive voice to argue for a deeply personal connection between land, politics, and the individual human body.

That dear white hand within my own I took
"Illa,” I whispered, "May I keep it so?"
My eager blood my anxious cheek forsook
Fearing my love that loved me might say no....
She raised her eyes. There looking I beheld
The Sound of Music through the eyes of love.

So wrote Kate Thomas, prolific turn-of-the-century poet, playwright, suffragette, anarchist, and Mormon woman in her poem “To _______” within the unpublished pages of her journal.  Thomas, born in 1873 in Salt Lake to British parents, learned early to hide her sexual attraction to women from her Mormon community, retreating to New York City and Europe in 1921 while writing articles and poetry for the LDS Relief Society magazine. 

The landforms of Utah have long impressed visitors and residents alike. As the most striking distinctive imaginative features of Utah, the slot canyons, mountains, and, of course, lakes have inspired writers, story-tellers, and poets to craft imaginative associations in their work with these incredible geological features.