Writers Brent Hendricks and Nicole Walker read Monday at the UA Poetry Center for the last reading of the semester in the UA Prose Series.

Hendricks comes with an impressive resume. He is a graduate from the University of Virginia, Harvard Law School, and holds a Master’s in Fine Arts from the UA. His writing embodies themes such as his childhood, his past and death. His memoir, “A Long Day at the End of the World,” explores the Tri-State Crematory incident.

Among the 339 desecrated bodies discovered at the Tri-State Crematory, Hendricks’ father was found. In writing about the discovery of his father’s body, and the illness leading up to his father’s death, Hendricks creates a personal relationship with his audience, bringing it closer to him.

Walker, now a professor at Northern Arizona University, writes with authority on identity from a masculine and feminine perspective. During her reading, she captivated listeners with controversial topics and themes explored in her collection of nonfiction essays, “Quench Your Thirst With Salt.”

“Quench Your Thirst” is about stubbornness — “A stubborn landscape where stubborn water wants to stay in the stubborn mountains. A stubborn group of settlers who forces the water out of the mountain and into the Salt Lake Valley. A stubborn girl who acts older than she is. A stubborn religion that weighs sex and drinking the heaviest of sins. A stubborn father who, in order to defy the church, drinks himself to death. A stubborn woman who decides to have a baby girl, even though girls sometimes have a hard time in patriarchal Utah.”

Walker’s topics leave readers almost feeling like they are reading something that they shouldn’t, especially in scenes like a graphic rape described in the essay “Where the Wild Things Are.”

However, everything Walker writes has a purpose and leads to a greater message. Readers will want to know how it all comes together in the end.

Hendricks and Walker’s books are available for reading and purchase at the Poetry Center. Poetry readings will pick back up again in the fall after taking a break for the summer. The event is free of cost, but the learning experience is priceless.