After working as a tech writer for several years, Zoe Murdock turned to fiction, specifically to her Mormon roots. The result is her indie-press-published semi-autobiographical novel Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle with Polygamy.
Zoe has been very patient as I’ve taken several months to put this interview together and then publish it (the novel [...]

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Recently I wrote a short monograph about Mormons who work in comics.
Yes.
And you’re probably the best known of them.
Yes, I am.
And I just wanted — there is — I’m working on — for instance I’m thinking about putting together an anthology of Mormon artists and I was curious what you think Mormon comics should [...]

In the wake of last week’s news about Deseret Book taking Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books, I started thinking again about what alternatives there might be to Deseret Book’s dominance of the LDS market. There seems to be little question that many more sophisticated books, although apparently some are books that make the most sensitive or [...]

(or … How to Read a Poem)
by P. G. Karamesines
First, kiddo, disperse that obvious shadow:
To read is not to know.  To read
Is to listen from your quiet place
To the teasing laughter of some new voice.
Listening requires aptitude for not knowing.

 Scott Bronson has been a strong presence in Mormon Drama for a few decades nows, the pinnacle of his work being his drama _Stones_ (which tells two intimate stories about Abraham and Isacc, and then Christ and his mother Mary). He has tirelessly advocated the cause of Mormon Drama. With Thom Duncan, he started the glorious (but now dead and gone) Nauvoo Theatrical [...]

I’ve been at my parents house in Texas all week. They have a worn, original edition of Emmeline B. Wells’ Memories and Musings so I thought that it’d be nice to wrap up this run of Weekend Poetry (it will be back at some point — but next week I’m starting up Short Story Friday, again) [...]

Last year for National Poetry Month, I prepared a bibliograph of poetry by Mormons in print. I was, of course, surprised by how much there was that I didn’t know about and hadn’t included in the list.
I think I’ve done a better job this year.

Tuesday on the NPR program The Takeaway, the question of the day was triggered by the addition of the word Ballardian to dictionaries, referring to the author J. G. Ballard, who died this past weekend. Since they asked “Which authors deserve adjectives?” I thought it might be interesting to ask the question, “Which Mormon Authors [...]

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Hello?
Hello, is this Ric Estrada?
This is Ric Estrada.
Hi, my name’s Eric Jepson. Sal Velluto gave me your phone number, I hope you don’t mind.
No, I don’t mind.
Oh, great. I work with a Mormon criticism site called Motley Vision and Sal and other people call you the Father of Mormon comics. I was wondering if [...]

If poetry is out of fashion to a great degree, then epic poetry is almost prehistoric. Most people, if they have any idea of what epic poetry is, think of the Homerian and Vergilian ouverve — The Odyssey, the Iliad and the Aneid. With a little thought, they might also come up with some of [...]

I’ve always loved the story of Abish. I love it because it’s about a woman–a righteous woman, a woman with a name–who makes a big difference through her small acts of righteousness. I also love to tell people it’s my favorite scripture story and watch for traces of panic while they try to figure out [...]

So by now, most of you probably are aware of the origins of the name A Motley Vision. But the excerpt there is only part of Whitney’s description of the Grand Canyon, and because I wrote a senior thesis on it (and other instances of red rock poetry), and because I’m also (slowly) working [...]

Makes the anti-Mormon propaganda go down. Also: putting the sleuth of Baker Street in his place on completely neutral terms unrelated to century-old tribal grudges.

Some time ago, I mentioned to Theric during his series on the erotic in LDS literature and to MoJo shortly thereafter that I was on the verge of tackling something similar. I finally teetered over that edge and this essay—this rhetorical attempt—in which I grapple with the moral/spiritual uses of eroticism (of reading erotic texts, [...]

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As Motley Vision’s newest Official Contributor, I feel an obligation to have my first post explain something of my experience within and attitude towards the Mormon arts.
Several months ago, I plotted out a post called “Hero’s Journey of the Mormon Artist” which I had intended to submit to William. I’m glad I never finished it [...]

Front page of The Lusiad in the original Portuguese
Image by Thiago Gonçalves via Flickr

Last Fall I started putting together lists of the books mentioned or referenced each General Conference. And since I intend to do this each conference, I listened to the talks in each session with an ear to the books mentioned.
As a confirmed [...]

I turned to Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems for this edition of Weekend Poetry in hopes of finding a poem that both spoke to me and was available online. To my surprise, here’s what I ended up selecting:
At Mountain Meadows
for Juanita Brooks
(by R. A. Christmas, Dialogue 4.3, reprinted in both Harvest and A Believing People)
You’ll have [...]

Well, even though not all of you are as excited about National Poetry Month as I am a few of you did comment on the giveaway post and the winner is: Kelly!  I might still send a copy to Theric–out of pity–but I’m not so sure.  Congrats Kelly!
The next item of business is my question: [...]

I was surprised the other morning to see that LDSReview.net was closing up shop. I can’t claim to have been a regular or detailed reader of the service–to be honest, they didn’t review the kind of books I read. But I thought that they served an important role.
Historically, reviewers have served an important role in [...]

Jolie Hales’s Latter-Day Fake and the elusiveness of Mormonism.
It is with a certain degree of reticence that one examines a student short film with the intention of extracting profundity from its cluster of amateurish sights and sounds. This is not to say that student films cannot strive for and achieve a professional feel, but [...]

This is the first poem I remember reading in The Ensign and liking. It also appears to have been part of the last set of poems for the last year of the Eliza R. Snow contest, which ran during the 1970s and ’80s and ended in 1992. I read this poem as part of a [...]

So here’s the deal, AMVers. In celebration of National Poetry Month and in conjunction with AMV’s plan to do the same (I’ll try not to step on my co-bloggers toes here; if I do, especially you Wm., sorry in advance), I’m undertaking a month long exploration of Mormon verse. To chase these poets with me [...]

I don’t want to take anything away from National Poetry Month with another Twilight bender, but Theric’s worked so hard on his essay, “Saturday’s Werewolf: Vestiges of the Premortal Romance in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Novels,” that I thought I should jump in and give him his dues. Here’s the abstract:
“Saturday’s Werewolf explores Twilight in [...]

You can’t buy a lot with forty-six cents these days.  Not a soda.  Not a pack of gum.  Not even Lifesavers from the vending machine.  But you want to know what I got for forty-six cents (thank you amazon.com!)? The best book I’ve read in a long time, Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems.
This is one of [...]