Kase Johnstun

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Kase
Johnstun
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  • Fiction
Kase Johnstun

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Kase Johnstun lives and writes in Ogden, Utah. He was most recently named the 2021 Ogden Mayor’s Award Recipient for the Literary Arts. His forthcoming novel Cast Away will be published from Torrey House Press in 2024. Johnstun is the author of recently released Let The Wild Grasses Grow, recently named a finalist for the High Plains Book Awards, a Women’s National Book Association Great Group Read 2022, and longlisted for Reading the West. This novel is a reimagining of his grandma and grandpa Cordova/Chavez's lives during the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and WWII. 


He is the author of Beyond the Grip Craniosynostosis (McFarland & Co), which has been featured in Pennsylvania Parenting MagazinePortland Family MagazineThe Ogden Standard Examiner, and many other places, as well as having mentions in the Chicago Tribune and the Seattle Times. It was awarded the Gold Quill (First Place) in Creative Nonfiction by the League of Utah Writers for 2015. His work has been published widely by literary journals and trade magazines, including, but not limited to, Southwest the magazine, Yahoo Parenting, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Coldnoon: Travel Writing and Traveling PoeticsLike The Wind Magazine, and The Chronicle Review


He is the co-editor/author of Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front (The History Press), which was named the Salt Lake Tribune’s book of the month for August 2014 and the League of Utah Writers Recommended Read in Nonfiction 2015 (Third Place). His essay collection Tortillas for Honkies was named a finalist for the 2013 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Awards, and his collection Poker Tables, Coors, and Bunuelos was named a finalist for the 2020 Autumn House Press Nonfiction awards and the C&R Press Awards. Most of the essays in the collection have found homes in places like The Watershed Review, Label Me Latino/a, Prime Number Literary Magazine, Animal Literary Magazine, and Rougaroo Literary Magazine. He was literary chair for the Ogden City Arts Advisory Committee (2014-2018), he was named to Ogden’s 40 under 40 three weeks before he turned 40 in 2015. Johnstun hosts a literary podcast called LITerally where he interviews authors about all things publishing and writing. He is a board member of the Label Me Latina/o Literary Magazine (Queens University of Charlotte).


In January 2016, he was the artist in residence at JIWAR International Artist Residency in Barcelona, Spain. He was the 2020/2021 Literary Curator for the literary stage of the Utah Arts Festival and has supported and created literary events in Ogden since moving back to his home town in 2013. He has a BA in English Literature and Technical and Professional Writing from Weber State University, an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from Kansas State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University.

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