I recently prepared a Christmas package for my missionary son and hit upon the idea of searching past Ensign magazines for missionary Christmas stories to add to the package. I’m not sure if these stories are typical of other missionary Christmas stories, but I can say that the stories I found included two broad themes: [...]

Christmas eve. My dad’s hairy flailing right arm can reach most of the seats in the station wagon. That’s why I sit directly behind him. I stare at his hairy neck and realize that he has transformed himself into a werewolf

If you are reading this post, I am overcome by temptation—the temptation to add a few words to a conversation that has dominated Mormon discourse lately.

This is the final post in a five part series that explores the ethics of Latter-day Saint literature and criticism. In part four, “Maintaining Rhetorical Balance”, I cite Karl Keller’s suggestion that Mormonism’s lack or denial of a serious literary heritage stems from three delusions: 1) our Puritanism, 2) our paranoia, and 3) our apocalypticism. [...]

With my grandfather’s death just two weeks ago, the increasing demands of my doctoral studies, and my family’s attempts to move (they’ve been foiled for the moment by buyers that decided to back out at the last minute), I haven’t been able to give the final post in my series the time it needs. So [...]

Here’s how it all went down:

I had just graduated with a bachelor’s in English from USU and was pregnant with my first baby. I wasn’t going to be “one of those women” who just lets her education go for home and hearth (whatever that means! Thank you liberal/feminist education!) so I joined the ward [...]

This is the fourth post in a five or six part series that explores the ethics of Latter-day Saint literature and criticism. In part three, “The (In)Convenience of Mormon Letters”, I briefly examine a New Testament narrative–Satan’s temptations of Christ–first of all, to underscore the dangers a consumer-based outlook on Mormon theology poses to Mormon [...]

This is the third post in a five or six part series that explores the ethics of Latter-day Saint literature and criticism. In part two, “In Exchange for the Soul”, I extend the paradoxes of existence more deeply into the realm of literature, exploring how our literary experience with them can become an “intelligent [...]