Try Windows on the Sea, by Linda Sillitoe, and Back Before the World Turned Nasty by Pauline Mortensen, both from Signature, which also reissued Virginia Sorensen’s Where Nothing is Long Ago.

I concur.

It’ll be interesting to see how the one Angela is working on will compare to the spate of anthologies from the ’90s. And it’d be awesome if we could have a Mormon-themed short story anthology every five years (at the very least).

I’m pretty sure that I’m the one responsible for Shayne Bell being in Bright Angels and Familiars. And I may be the one responsible for the specific Card short story that’s in the anthology (”The Fringe”).

I don’t remember the accompanying circumstances very well. My best reconstruction is that it was some kind of casual conversation with Eugene England (possibly a chance meeting in the BYU Bookstore on a trip back to Utah from graduate school in California?) where he told me about the anthology of Mormon short stories that he was editing. I believe that I asked him if he was including any sf&f stories (making some of the same points as Lee Allred about this being an important area where there actually *is* a vibrant short story market, and one where Mormons have been successful). He said no and asked me for recommendations, and I mentioned Shayne’s work, which I’m pretty sure he didn’t know about. He asked me to get some samples, and so I went to the BYU library, found a couple of Shayne’s recent publications in some of the sf&f magazines, and photocopied them for him.

One of them was “Dry Niger” (the story that wound up being included). I remember this because I had thought I was just giving a sample of Shayne’s work, not making specific recommendations for a story to include in the anthology, and so was surprised when Eugene told me he was including that one. (I’d expected that he’d want something with a more specifically Mormon twist.)

This must have been about the time he was finalizing the anthology lineup, because I remember that I had to get stuff to him right away if it was going to be considered for inclusion in the anthology.

I’m pretty sure that I also suggested Scott Card in this same conversation, though it may be that Eugene was already planning to include a short story by him. I do have a vague memory of possibly telling Eugene about Scott Card’s _Folk of the Fringe_ stories as being a set of stories that included a more explicitly Mormon link than his previous short stories, and Eugene not knowing about that previously. But I may be misremembering this part of it.

To take Angela’s above observation further, the short story form may _be_ the natural Mormon letters genre. The SF field is one of the very few that still has a viable short story market, so it’s not too surprising that excellent work has been done there by Mormon writers. I’d rank Shayne Bell at the top (Card’s more a novelist), but Dave Wolverton, Virginia Baker, and Susan Kroupa are all very skilled in the short form.

Acknowledgement of this development in Mormon Letters is, I think, “essential.”

With all due respect to William’s list (I love Doug Thayer’s work, btw, and can easily see why William chose the others on his list), none of those titles look too far afield past the halls of the Jesse Knight Annex. :)

– Lee

I’m very excited about the Zarahemla anthology, and I also agree that the short story form is a more mature genre in Mormon letters. It kind of has to be because there are so few literary novels that get published.

And I disagree, too, with your estimation of Bright Angels. A very important anthology. And I just recently discovered and read Mary Clyde’s _Survival Rates_ and it’s excellent, as is Darrell Spencer’s _Caution: Men in Trees_. _The House of James_ by Lewis Horne is great, too.

The misunderstanding was mutual.

May it never happen again.

:)

—-

Good to hear it Ann. I’ll post the plan early next week.