NONFICTION
WHEN I WAS RED CLAY
A Journey of Identity, Healing,
and Wonder
“Bailey’s moving testament of resilience is sure to satisfy readers of nature writing and autobiography alike."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This intimate record lays bare one person’s experience growing up in a rural Mormon community and struggling to reconcile his sexual orientation with the religious doctrine of his childhood. Finding solace and connection in wild places, Jonathan T. Bailey lived two lives—one of trauma, the other of wonder. In When I Was Red Clay, he navigates self–discovery, grief, and the loss of faith with unflinching honesty and biting humor.
September 2022 | Nonfiction | 978-1-948814-63-8 | 200 pp | $16.95
33RD ANNUAL READING THE WEST BOOK AWARDS WINNER
MEMOIR, AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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2022 FOREWORD INDIES WINNER | SILVER, LGBTQ+
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NEW MEXICO-ARIZONA BOOK AWARDS | FINALIST
MEMOIR AND LGBTQ+
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JONATHAN T. BAILEY is an award-winning writer, artist, and conservation photographer. He is the author of the poetry book The Sun Has Shifted As Have I, the literary memoir When I Was Red Clay: A Journey of Identity, Healing, and Wonder, and co-author of The Greater San Rafael Swell. His work has been published in The Salt Lake Tribune, High Country News, Indian Country Today, and more. Bailey lives in Tucson, Arizona.
PRAISE FOR WHEN I WAS RED CLAY
"A courageous memoir of growing up gay in a rural Mormon community and avoiding erasure by finding refuge in wilderness."
—TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, The New York Times
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“In Bailey’s profoundly moving memoir, the diversity of creation illuminates the inner landscape and inspires healing—and wonder. The past is a gift, Bailey says, and this brave journey into the intimate wilderness is another gift. With the clarity and fresh eyes of meditation, we visit the topography of bones, the meaning of the natural world, and the centering of spirit within ourselves, within community, and in our footsteps and vision. In the true meaning of the word: this book is awesome.”
—GEORGE K. ILSLEY, author of The Home Stretch
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"Utah’s Emery County maps hard ideological boundaries over some of the harshest landscapes of the arid West. Even so, the stratified cliffs, seeping recesses, and crustal sinks testify of lush and various inhabitations, eon upon eon. Utterly here, Bailey confines us to a temporal body untenable and ecstatic, hypersensitized to the play of surface and interior, opacity and revelation, hostility and intimacy. This kind of writing can only emerge from the awful beauty of always-yet-never Home.”
—KARIN ANDERSON, author of Before Us Like a Land of Dreams
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“When I Was Red Clay is honest as acid and proof that nature can provide.”
—ADVENTURE JOURNAL
“Touching on current events and topics, from conservation and immigration to suicide and autism, Bailey has penned a thought-provoking memoir. The wilderness of deserts in Utah and Arizona are their own characters . . . Readers will find hope and peace on these beautifully written pages.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review)
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“Bailey’s evocative, candid memoir explores spirituality, heritage, and the lives and landscapes we choose to inhabit. Offering hope to disenfranchised LGBTQ+ youth through its testament of self-acceptance and recovery, When I Was Red Clay also stresses the need to find new and ‘open-armed communities’ when old worlds are no longer sustainable.”
—FOREWORD REVIEWS
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“When I Was Red Clay is an homage to the western desert country, a place that can be ‘unimaginably bewitching.’ I haven’t read something so beautiful in a long time. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
—MARYA JOHNSTON, Out West Books
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ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
THE SUN HAS SHIFTED AS HAVE I
Poems
Jonathan T. Bailey maps the process of transformation, weaving themes of longing, belonging, and self-discovery. Set against the beauty of the West where the buzz of cicadas and the song of the hermit thrush echo across the desert, the collection draws power from the land’s ability to hold both desolation and renewal. Bailey’s poetry embraces contradiction as essential to healing, refusing to separate pain from beauty or vulnerability from strength. Rather than offering closure, these poems reveal how wholeness is forged through emotional risk and the clarity gained by facing oneself fully.
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“Bailey’s poems hold a wisdom that feels desperately needed in our times.”
—SUNNI BROWN WILKINSON, Rodeo
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