Chadd VanZanten
Chadd writes outdoor essays and short fiction. He is the author of On Fly-Fishing the Bear River Watershed (The History Press 2021), an essay collection about fly-fishing the Bear River and its tributaries. Chadd is also the author of On Fly-Fishing the Wind River Range (The History Press 2018), which was selected as 2019–2020 Book of the Year by the League of Utah Writers. His fiction can be found in his short-story collection, The Key to This Whole Entire Thing (Knowledge Forest Press 2019) and numerous anthologies.
Chadd lives in northern Utah, where he works as a professional editor. When he is not writing, he is fishing. The opposite is also true.
On Fly-fishing
Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a pastime more emblematic of the western spirit than fly-fishing. Liberating, poetic, wild, soothing and inspiring, it pushes the boundaries of the mind. In essays ranging from introspective to ironic, angler authors Chadd VanZanten and Russ Beck distill the purest truths of fly-fishing into essential, often humorous rules of thumb. With kernels like "always tell the truth sometimes" and "all the fish are underwater," wade into the blue ribbon waters of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah to reflect metaphysically on these lines of practical wisdom.
