Z-Arts Presents Stephen Trimble
Saturday, April 9, 2022, 7:30 p.m.,
Canyon Community Center, Springdale, Utah

In his latest book, The Mike File, well-known Utah Writer Stephen Trimble turns inward to grapple with his older brother’s heartrending life and death, and to look behind doors he’s long barricaded inside himself.

In 1957, when “Stevie” was six, psychosis overwhelmed Mike, who was only 14. Trimble’s parents had no choice but to commit Mike to the Colorado State Hospital. He never lived at home again and died alone in a boarding home at 33. Journalists used Mike’s death to expose the “ratholes” warehousing people with mental illness.

Detective story, social history, journey of self-discovery, and compassionate and unsparing memorial to a family and a forgotten life, The Mike File will move every reader with a relative or friend touched by psychiatric illness or disability.

Trimble will be in conversation with Clinical Child Psychologist Dr. Lynne Cobb to explore not only what may have happened to Mike, but how Mike’s life parallels our treatment of the mentally ill over the last 70 years.

Stephen Trimble  As a writer, editor, and photographer, Stephen Trimble has published 25 award-winning books during 45 years of paying attention to the landscapes and peoples of the Desert West. He’s received The Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Award for photography and conservation and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Colorado College. In 2019, he was honored as one of Utah’s 15 most influential artists. Trimble speaks and writes as a conservation advocate and has taught writing at the University of Utah. He makes his home in Salt Lake City and the redrock country of Torrey, Utah. For more about his work, see www.stephentrimble.net.