Stephen Trimble

READING

Stephen Trimble

Wheatgrass Books will host Stephen Trimble, author of The Mike File, for a reading and conversation on Tuesday, September 5th at 7 pm.

In The Mike File, a 2022 Human Relations Mental Health Awareness Book of the Year, Stephen Trimble grapples with his brother’s heartrending life and death and looks behind doors he’s barricaded in himself.

In 1957, when “Stevie” was six and Mike 14, psychosis overwhelmed Mike. He never lived at home again and died alone in a Denver boarding home at 33. Journalists used Mike’s death to expose these “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.

As 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 his alma mater, Colorado College. In 2019, he was honored as one of Utah’s 15 most influential artists. Trimble writes as a conservation advocate and has taught writing at the University of Utah. He makes his home in Salt Lake City and in the redrock country of Torrey, Utah.

“...a new voice of eloquent witness… With restrained grief and unrestrained remembrance, Trimble reclaims in words his lost, loved and loving brother. He reminds us that the mad among us are human—and in many ways versions of ourselves.”
—Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No One Cares About Crazy People