"The Avian Hourglass" and the Power of Perspective: Lindsey Drager at USU’s Brewer Festival

Last month, Utah State University’s Department of English hosted its Brewer Festival of Writing, an event held in partnership with the Utah Humanities Book Festival each October.

Featured author Lindsey Drager read from her latest book, The Avian Hourglass, a work of fiction that imagines a near-future world without birds, where pollution has permanently obstructed a view of the stars.

Drager’s novel presents a surreal yet familiar small town where residents enjoy a “bird’s eye view” after climbing into human-sized nests — are they art installations or something more sinister? The excerpts she shared showed characters dealing with the mundanity of life that one often takes for granted. However, the story simultaneously grapples with the sudden emergence of a conflict that forces people to take sides. As the author puts it, the characters begin to “see the same world through different lenses” but risk missing an opportunity to address the crisis while looking the other way.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Drager said she, like many others, started noticing birds while trapped at home during the pandemic when there was more time to stare out the window at the world outside and more division about how to address COVID.

“A lot of this has to do with … growing up in the rural Midwest, seeing a lot of this cruel optimism at work with people that I love and care for,” said Drager, who defined ‘cruel optimism’ as desiring something that conversely stands in the way of one’s flourishing. “And then the pandemic happened, and we all wrote a bunch because that's how we respond to that sort of chaos.”

During the Q&A that followed, Drager discussed the relationship between character and plot development, the challenge of dialogue and placement, and whether she revisits previous work.

She admitted that authors have “touchstones” that can resurface — in her case, being a “technophobe,” and said she’s been criticized for having characters who deal in existence and not necessarily reality. However, that very sense of estrangement, Drager said, can have the effect of raising the reader’s consciousness and lay bare the realities that are so familiar we don’t even see them anymore.

USU Assistant Professor of English Amber Caron, who uses Drager’s novels in her fiction writing classes, introduced the featured author, describing Drager’s work as “reveal[ing] a world that is bigger and more beautiful and more heartbreaking and more hopeful than you ever expected it could be.”

The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Bard Fiction Prize, Drager is an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah and the author of four novels.

Named for former USU English professor Ken Brewer, the Logan campus festival began in 2021, and each year, a notable author is selected as the flagship for this annual half-day event. In addition to a reading and time for students and faculty to ask questions of the featured guest(s), the last two festivals have included a panel bringing authors and artists together.

During the Oct. 3 festival, USU Professor of English Jennifer Sinor moderated this year’s panel with representatives from USU’s Caine College of the Arts. Terry Powers, assistant professor of drawing and painting, and ceramicist Antra Sinha joined Drager to discuss the relationship between art and the environment.

“As someone who knew Ken and worked with him, I can attest to how perfectly Lindsey’s work captures Ken’s passions. He was a man with a bird feeder outside every window. His poems were filled by their presence, and he encouraged all those around him to take wing,” said Sinor. “A consummate teacher, he would have been honored to have seen the way Lindsey engaged students.”

Learn more about this year’s featured author: https://www.lindseydrager.com/