Writers gather to celebrate first-ever Helicon West anthology

Writers and literature fans from across Utah and abroad gathered Thursday at Logan’s downtown Bluebird restaurant to celebrate the release of local twice-monthly reading series Helicon West’s first-ever anthology.

What started as a conversation over Mexican food became an anthology that is a special breed, featuring all writers on the professional spectrum—widely published authors, wielding PhDs, MFAs and a mess of publications to previously unpublished students.

“In April of 2015, I believe, [Chadd VanZanten and Tim Keller]”—two of the anthology’s editors—“said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a proposal for you. We want to buy you dinner and let’s talk about this,’” said Star Coulbrooke, Utah State University Writing Center Director and editor of the anthology. “I thought, ‘Oh, no—what could they have in mind? This is intriguing.’”

VanZanten and Keller pitched the idea to Coulbrooke: an anthology that would include all the featured writers from Helicon West readings. Keller knew about publishing and VanZanten could promote a Kickstarter on social media to give the project a financial footing.

Coulbrooke was sold.

It took a year and a half to publish the anthology after the inception of the original idea, which, Coulbrooke says, is rather quick in the world of publishing. She couldn’t be happier about the way it turned out.

“It just came together in a miraculous way,” she said.

The anthology’s pages are filled with works from featured writers who have read at the Helicon West reading series over the past 10 years. Such writers include Utah’s Poet Laureate Lance Larsen, USU faculty members Jennifer Sinor, Russ Beck, Star Coulbrooke, Ben Gunsberg, Charles Waugh, Michael Sowder, Shanan Ballam and Brock Dethier, and a number of both current and former USU students.

Brittney McDonald, a senior studying English with an emphasis in creative writing, was published in the anthology and says it’s an honor that makes her feel how every creative writing student yearns to feel—like a writer.

“It’s huge for me. It’s so flattering to be published alongside Dinty Moore and Shanan Ballam, and that Star asked me to do this. It blows my mind,” McDonald said. “It makes me feel like a writer.”

McDonald also noted that her publication and those of her fellow USU students can encourage others to pursue their own interests in writing.

“I think it’s a giant encouragement to get involved,” she said. “It goes to show that it’s really easy to get involved with your community and sometimes it can have really big outcomes. If you invest your heart and soul and you’re committed to it, it does benefit you.”

The release party’s crowd was treated to a reading by a group of writers who were each published in the anthology. Afterward, the same group participated in a panel discussion moderated by Utah Humanities literature program officer Michael McLane.

USU graduate and slam poet Darren Edwards and poet Susan Pesti-Strobel—each a part of the group of readers and discussion panel at the release party—heralded the influence Helicon West has had on the writing community in Logan.

Edwards says the reading series has “helped so many people develop and grow in so many ways.”

Pesti-Strobel called Helicon West the “best thing to happen to Logan,” and that it “brings the whole community together.”

The anthology is the culmination of 10 years of Logan’s writing community meeting on the second and fourth Thursday of each month to share prose and poetry in an open and encouraging environment.

“That’s the beauty of [Helicon West]. You can come and there is no judgement,” Pesti-Strobel said. “Everything is cream and sugar. We take away something from everybody’s reading.”

This anthology won’t be the last, Coulbrooke says. It’s something she is hoping to do again in a couple of years.

For now, though, she is content. The trio of editors—Coulbrooke, VanZanten and Keller—did an amazing thing, Coulbrooke says. The anthology unites students with professionals and all that fall in between to perpetuate the influence of writing.

“We are carrying the light of literature—of all kinds of literature—of the local, of the national, of the global; it goes all together and it lights the way for people,” Coulbrooke said. “It includes not only the famous writers, but the aspiring writers who are students. Some of the students in the book have never been published. It’s just an amazing mix.”