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Meet the Utah poet long-listed for a national award for her collection on Black pioneerism

Rio Cortez is from Salt Lake City and says growing up as a Black woman, particularly as a teenager, in the state was isolating.

(Paul Tran | Penguin Books) Rio Cortez, Utah-born poet, has published her first collection, "Golden Ax." Some of the poems are centered on her growing up Black in Salt Lake City, and the connections she makes between her family's journey west and the migration of the Mormon pioneers to Utah.