[2] His father, William Evenson, was a longtime professor of physics at Brigham Young University (BYU) and later an administrator at the same school.

[6] His case, along with others, was included in a report by the American Association of University Professors, which argued that academic freedom was stifled at BYU.

Nonetheless, Evenson has asserted that he maintains a measure of respect for devout believers in the LDS Church and does not intend to casually offend or provoke them.

[8] Evenson's work has been compared to that of J. G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, Paul Bowles, Franz Kafka, William S. Burroughs, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Coover and Edgar Allan Poe (among others).

[9] Evenson has expressed admiration for horror novelist Peter Straub,[8] and for crime fiction in the hardboiled genre, both past masters like Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson,[10] and contemporary practitioners like Andrew Vachss.