For this week’s pick, I’m going to go with a story from the New Era. We’ll get to a Popcorn Popping story next week and we have several more excellent submissions of stories that appeared in Dialogue. Nothing from Sunstone so far, though. And so far no women have submitted to the spreadsheet.
Title: Just Cut [...]

Part III: Poetry, Style and Literary Craft in the Book of Mormon
Often in Family Home Evening we would read from different translations of the Bible. Someone would have the KJV, someone else The Jerusalem Bible, another The Revised Standard or New English Version. We would take turns reading and the others would follow along in [...]

In my opinion, J. Kirk Richards* is one of the shining lights—the suns, really—of Mormon visual art. His work is well-crafted, poignant, spiritual, and deeply affective.
When I first came across his paintings, most notably Cherubim and a Flaming Sword, I connected with his world on such a human level that I felt constrained to write [...]

Hancock County, performed last week by Westminster College in Salt Lake City, was a riveting evening of theater. The thing is, though, that no matter who performs it, or how well, that level of interest is going to be the case, because of the inherent drama in the story and the skill of Slover’s writing. So [...]

I’m pleased to announce the launch of Wilderness Interface Zone, a new blog headed up by Patricia Karamesines devoted to literary nature and science writing. Or as Patricia describes it: “A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.”
WIZ’s intent is to foster the development of a tradition of nature literature written by Mormons as [...]

The annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters will take place 9 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, at the library at Utah Valley University in Orem. Attendance is free — although if you want to attend the luncheon, it’ll cost you $12 and you should either  R.S.V.P. today if you want to pay at [...]

There have been some excellent submissions so far to Short Story Friday. But too many of them are from Popcorn Popping and several are rather self-serving. That’s not a bad thing at all and we will get to them, but to kick things off, I decided to dig deep in to Dialogue’s archives. Here’s what [...]

Overview
Part II: Joseph as Translator & Writer
In the First Part I mentioned the Book of Mormon’s strong oral rhythm. Thinking about the oral rhythm has influenced several of my conclusions, my overview. I may add other topics, and make digressions and side trips from time to time, but the oral rhythm is not the first [...]

Since February is Black History Month I’ve been thinking: what do we know about the history and experiences of black members of the LDS church?
For me, the answer is not much.  I mean,  I’ve heard my dad tell his story about having to defend the Church and it’s policies in a high school history class [...]

Overview
Part I: An Oral Document
In August 2005 when Pres. Hinckley made his invitation (which morphed to a commandment in some minds) to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year we found Rex Campbell’s narration of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants and Pearl of Great Price and started listening. Earlier [...]

Thanks to your encouraging comments, I have decided to go forward with the Short Story Friday experiment. Yep, we’re going to crowdsource the Mormon short stories available online. The premise is this:

That there are numerous Mormon-themed short stories available for free on the Internet.
That the best way to find the goods ones is via a [...]

If you haven’t seen it yet, the finalists for the 2008 Whitney Awards have been posted. As expected, Bound on Earth by Angela Hallstrom is nominated in all three categories it was eligible for (novel of the year, new author, general fiction). And as expected, Angel Falling Softly was not a finalist in any category. [...]

Laura’s excellent post on Benediction got me thinking about Mormon-themed short story collections. Specifically, the relative paucity thereof, but also the fact that even with the few that have been published there are several that I consider the essential starting points (rather than novels) for anyone seeking to understand (or produce work in) the field [...]

In Eugene Woodbury’s essay, Pelagius and the Fools, and in William’s last post they both talk about the importance of comedy.  I agree with what they are saying but I am also sometimes disheartened at the selection of comedy available.  There isn’t much out there, and what is isn’t actually comedy, it’s just silliness.  However, [...]