About a decade ago I read an essay on the modern artist Wayne Thiebaud which talked about the communal aspects of his work. The essay attributed these aspects of his work to the communal aspects of his youth, from his birth in a Mesa, Arizona LDS community. Of course there are many communal aspects to [...]
While working on a translation of Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon earlier this week, I came across a passage where he uses the word Celestialized. Of course, I couldn’t find the word listed in my bilingual dictionary, and it occurred to me that this must be a fairly unique word–one that isn’t used very often outside [...]
This fall will see a flurry of minor but important developments in the evolution of Mormon cinema. I don’t know how things look on the ground in Utah (there were a few movies this year whose release dates came and went and didn’t blip my radar at all), but as far as I can tell [...]
The first work of Mormon fiction was published 165 years ago today, on the front page of the New York Herald, so if Mormon fiction has a birthday, it is today.
In Cedar City for the Shakespearean Festival last week I purchased a copy of the SUU literary magazine, “Kolob Canyon Review.” Thumbing through the issue (which contains work by SUU students, faculty and alumni), I couldn’t find any work that used Mormon themes or references, but the names of several of the contributors, together with [...]
I’m looking for a few good voices.
For the rest of August, A Motley Vision’s companion blog Wilderness Interface Zone is hosting “Vox Humana Week” as part of its “People Month.” For an explanation of what “People Month” is, you can go here:
If you have a podcast or mp3 you’ve made where you’re reading your own [...]
He Is Ours
You were an island of stretched-out skin
A shock of flesh bath water could not cover
I was thinking about earthquakes and volcanoes
The plate tectonics of your sharp heels
Kicking tremors in the dome of her womb
And the lava is blood
A red river
It hisses and bites at the sea
A birth!
Who is it?
He is ours—
This continent’s new [...]
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Last year this month I surveyed all I knew about Mormon Comix (defined quite broadly) (and using a spelling some took issue with). This month (and in subsequent Augusts) I will briefly review three of my favorite Mormon Comix read since 2008’s write-up.
Anyone aware of my reading will note some obvious names missing from this [...]
An almanac is not literature, of course, but is a reference work, so few people sit down and read it cover to cover. Instead, we grab an almanac to find the answer to some question–usually factual and historical questions like when did something happen, how large is something, how many are there and were there, [...]
A quick note to all authors (and filmmakers), agents, publishers, publicists and fans out there: what’s the status of the Mormon Literature Database entry for you (or the author you love/represent)?
Authors and agents (and I bet that publicists with close ties to the author would be accepted since most authors publishing in the Mormon market [...]
So if I am understanding things correctly, the fall issue of Dialogue has been printed and will be previewed at the Sunstone Symposium this week, and it contains my Dialogue debut — the series of five shortish short stories “Gentle Persuasions.” So not to torture those of you who won’t be receiving your copy in [...]
Of Speaking the Truth, Scapegoats, and Absorbing the Rhetoric of Blame
(A Review Essay of Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter)
Author(s): Melissa G. Moore with M. Bridget Cook
Publisher: Self-published through Cedar Fort, Inc. (Springville, UT)
Release date: 8 September 2009
I. Speaking the Truth
I must begin this review essay, which I had great difficulty [...]
Since I’ve been thinking more lately about responsible rhetoric and what my language does once it leaves my mind and my mouth, I’ve noticed a number of Mormon cultural instances in which language has been used by leaders/teachers in what I consider reckless ways. Hence this series of Airing the Rhetorical Laundry posts, which I [...]
Some writers might be born great and others achieve greatness, but Todd Robert Petersen had greatness thrust upon him when, in 1998, he won first, second, and third place in the Sunstone fiction contest. The book that came out of those wins, Long After Dark, is Mormon Literature straddling an ontological rift–the rift between simple [...]
The Wall St. Journal has attempted to cause a minor literary ruckus with an opinion piece by Lee Siegel titled “The End of the Episode.”Siegel, borrowing his intellectual argument from British philosopher Galen Strawson, argues that the narrative — “straightforward storytelling style connects events together in one continuous thruline whose fundamental purpose is to reveal [...]
Mormon culture too often loses something when LDS authors and artists choose the national and international market over the LDS market. I call this the Randy Bachman Syndrome.