In order to promote and develop Mormon literature in Portuguese, we are pleased to announce the first Parley P. Pratt Mormon Short Story Contest. Starting April 1st, Mormons who write in Portuguese will be able to submit their writing to compete for publication and prizes totaling R$1,000 (Brazilian Reais – approximately $500 or EUR 400).

The contest is the first attempt to encourage development of Mormon literature in Portuguese. Although there have been Portuguese-speaking LDS Church members since the 1940s. Only in the past two decades has the number of members become large enough to see local Mormon culture develop. With a large enough audience, it is now time to see what Portuguese-speakers can produce.

Those interested in writing can submit their stories starting April 1st, and before July 1st. The winners of the contest and those stories that have been selected for inclusion in a published anthology of the best stories will be announced on October 1st. The anthology should be available starting December 1st.

The contest is open to anyone, and each contestant can submit up to three stories of up to 10,000 words, however entries must be written in Portuguese and must have some kind of connection to Mormonism. A three person jury will judge the entries and select both those who will receive cash prizes and those stories that will be included in the anthology. The organizers and the jury and their families are ineligible. [Please read the full rules before submitting an entry.]

Since the contest is only open to works written in Portuguese, the website describing the rules is also in Portuguese. Anyone wanting further information is welcome to ask me – kent [at] motleyvision [dot] org.

The tour hopes to explore the place of Mormon women writers in the 21st century through a series of readings at Claremont Graduate University (March 22nd), Arizona State University (March 23rd), Southern Utah University (March 25th), Utah Valley University (March 26th) and the University of Utah (March 27th). It is the brainchild of Dr. Joanna Brooks of San Diego State University and Dr. Holly Welker of Salt Lake City, who want to explore a broad range of Mormon women’s writing, regardless of the writer’s religious tradition within Mormonism.

Organizer Brooks, , a professor of English who is also known on the Internet for her “Ask Mormon Girl” website, says, “This is about creating common ground. We want to create a space for women to share their writing and reflect on what it might mean to be a Mormon woman in the 21st century.”

Participants in the event will include: Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Joanna Brooks, Holly Welker, Elisa Pulido, Judith Curtis, Whitney Mower, Whitney Nelson, Danielle Dubrasky, Zoe Murdock, Laura Nielsen Baxter, Julie Nichols, Lee Mortenson, Terisa Humiston, Elizabeth Pinborough, Kathryn Lynard Soper, Cassandra Eddington and Angela Sweat Hallstrom.

More information about locations along with biographies of the participants can be found on the Mormon Women Writers blog.

Both Austenland and A & H tackle romantic fantasies and the nature of romantic comedies, their “grotesque mimicry of actual love (A & H 304).”  And when Becky tries to decide whether or not she could actually love Felix romantically, she writes a screenplay with a movie ending.  But the novel’s conclusion isn’t a “Hollywood ending.”  Did you feel that writing it the way you did was risky?

Oh sure. I knew some readers would be angry, and I was sorry for that, because I knew absolutely that the ending was the right one for this story. I think it goes back to genre–those who expected a certain ending might not be willing to go with me where I wanted to take the story. And this story just might not be a good fit for their sensibilities. That’s okay. I knew (was told) that the book would sell better if I made the Hollywood ending work, but for me that would have made the story pointless and been sheer betrayal of the characters. I try to do right by the characters.

Speaking of that ending, it isn’t really an ending, especially as far as romantic comedies go.  How have readers reacted to it?

One of my sisters sobbed when a certain character died, and was elated by the ending. Another of my sisters was dry-eyed throughout the book then sobbed at the ending because it wasn’t what she wanted. I’ve had many letters from women who have experienced Becky’s personal tragedy who were so happy and relieved by the ending, and that was a huge validation for me. I crafted the book carefully to lead to that moment, and I wonder if those readers who were unhappy with it could read the book a second time, what they’d think then. We are often shackled by notions of genre! And the truth is, our lives don’t fit cozily into any particular one. I love genre fiction–I write genre fiction–but I think there’s a place for this kind of story too. I think exploring the great mystery of a genre-less life is exciting, and it gave me a chance to look at how stories affect how we conceive of our own lives and how we tell ourselves our own stories.

Do you think of A & H as subverting the romantic comedy, or does it do something more like open possibilities for other stories than what the conventions of romantic comedies allow for?

Someone said that all artists are by nature subversive, and I guess that’s true. And maybe true of me too, insofar as I’m a possibilities junkie. For me, that’s the most beautiful part of the religion I follow: agency. Choices. We can trap ourselves in life by expecting things to go like they do in a story, and being disappointed when they don’t. The romantic comedy is a fine and ancient genre, and one I respect tremendously. And I think it deserves exploration: why do we honor it? Why do we revisit this story again and again? And what does it mean in our own lives? What draws me as an author, what fascinates me, is both the clash and marriage of two very different things. Becky and Felix. Fantasy and reality. Comedy and tragedy. Ancient and new. Spiritual and mundane. My life is a series of clashing and coupling in strange and enticing ways. I want stories to provide that. A great story should be a place where we can see the messy wonderfulness of life from arm’s length, be entertained, and come away from it seeing our own world a little bit differently.

As I read this novel, I got the feeling that writing it might have changed you. Did it?  How?

I went to a place in A&H I never thought I’d go. Grief is so hard for me. When I write a book, I live in the world where I wrote it, and the death of one character especially was agonizing. But it was good too. I kept chanting that old Greek word to myself–cathartic, cathartic, it’s cathartic. It helped me own the pain and make it productive. I lost a sister a few years ago, as most people have lost someone, and it made me very wary of tragedy and death. Why seek it out in stories when it can accost us so suddenly and so horribly in life? And of course the kind of death in the book is a horror that I tried to never contemplate without shuddering away. But it was good for me to face it and see what it would be like, and to move through it to a different place again. I think that’s part of the wonder of stories. They can take hold of all those kinked emotions inside us and lay them out straight where we can view them, thoughtfully.

What do you hear about A & H?  Is it generating as much discussion as you’d hoped?

I don’t google myself or eavesdrop on others’ conversations in that way, so I only know what comes to me. What I hear both delights and discourages me. I am very sorry when people refer to Becky Jack as “evil.” The judgement in that word makes me worried for us as a people. Is no one allowed to make mistakes? To think differently than we do? I hear the book often dismissed because of the premise, which I’m sorry about as well. The premise was a place to start and a way to explore and ask questions that intrigued me, as well as a way to play with a kind of a story that I’d never read. I’d hoped it could be read and thought about. I think sometimes our lives are precarious, and we can be afraid if they’re nudged a bit, it’ll all come falling down. And some people very honestly have reasons to be worried by the premise, and I understand that. I am so grateful for those readers who are willing to set aside prejudgement and go on this journey with me.

Austenland and A & H seem to be establishing a trajectory of romantic comedy/social prodding for your writing.  Do you think you have more books like these two in your head?

I am writing another Austenland book, which has been tremendous fun. I never considered it until a few months ago when a new story occurred to me, ever so tauntingly. It’s a very different exercise than writing a period fantasy, and I really enjoy doing comedy. As a teenager, I was all about drama, but as I get older, I think making people laugh is one of the noblest things on this planet. Humor requires intelligence, and to laugh and cry together is divine. I haven’t yet explored all that I want to with these stories–why do we need romance? How do stories affect our self-concept and how we see others? Where do fantasy and realism meet? I write whichever story shouts at me the loudest, and I’m always listening, so we’ll see what comes.

Thank you, Shannon, for this wonderful interview!

What artistic works have inspired you?

That’s a big question. I was raised on fairy tales, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Joan Aiken, etc. High school and college was mostly the “classics,” then grad school was literary fiction (living authors do exist!). After selling The Goose Girl, I discovered YA lit, and that makes up 50% of my reading material now. And then there’s music, movies, plays, visual art…hard for me to dissect it, but it all gets into my brain.

You’re a mother with young children.  In your novel, The Actor and the Housewife, Becky wonders if it’s possible to support a spouse and a best friend of the opposite gender. But for aspiring writers with young children, the question of how to support a writing career while meeting the needs of family may be equally compelling.  How do you manage the challenges?

One of the things that fascinates me is the question of balance. I think women are asked to be professional balancers, and we learn on-the-job. I’m somewhat methodical about it: I make a list of priorities; I set aside time for writing then try to keep the writing hounds at bay during the other hours of the day; I make daily writing goals; I constantly reevaluate. As a woman, as a human being, I need a creative outlet. I need to play with words and tell stories. I believe making the time to pursue it makes me a better mom.

On your website, you tell how Actor and Housewife began with a dream.  The dream, which you describe as a glance at a relationship between two people, resembles in its snapshot nature the dream Stephenie Meyer says began her narrative journey. Is something rising in the dreams of Mormon women writers?

Ha! That’d be awesome. There should be an epidemic of Mormon women having novel-inspiring dreams that take over the book world! That’ll get the newspapers talking. I’ve been writing for 26 years (I started young! I swear!) and this is the first story I’ve written that began as a dream, though I knew many writers in college who often trolled their dreams for story fodder. Like Stephenie, I didn’t dream the whole book but used a moment between two characters from a dream as a place to begin. It was serendipitous and I’d love to be so fortunate again, but most of my dreams are just weird.

On your website, you describe A&H as a “labor of love.”  That’s a wonderfully ambiguous phrase.  How was the writing of this novel a labor of love for you?

Well, this is a wonderfully ambiguous novel! The only audience I had in mind for this book was myself. That may seem self-indulgent, but it’s absolutely necessary in order to shut out the other voices and be true to the story. I didn’t know what market would embrace this, if any–Utah? Out of Utah? LDS? Religious? Not religious? Chick lit readers or chick lit loathers? I didn’t even know if my publisher would be willing to get behind it. But I knew I loved this story and these characters, and I knew I wanted to share them. I spent two and a half years on this book. It does mean a lot to me.

Could you tell us a little about why you went the route of the romantic comedy screenplay for the storyline of A&H rather than writing the story in the more lyrical style of your YA novels?

Ooh, good question, and there are so many reasons for this, but I’ll try to narrow my response to just a couple. The 3rd person narrator of my YA novels is so set in stone in my head, she’s not flexible. She is a way to stay close to my main character and yet use language that character couldn’t employ, and so add meaning the character might not see. I love that narrator. But she is limited. For one thing, she has no sense of humor. In order to add humor, I needed a different narrator.

I also needed one who was a strong personality, almost a tangible character in herself. This was for several reasons, but partly because I played with genre in this novel. In my experience, this can make adult readers uncomfortable. By the time we’re adults, we are taught to depend on genre as a handle to hold a story (compare the children and teen sections of a bookstore to the rest–we poor adults only know how to shop by genre!). There’s a huge risk I’ll lose my reader by fiddling with and bending genre so much, so I needed a very strong narrative presence, a lifeline, a feeling that someone was in control, who could see it all and assure the reader in moments of darkness.

And of course it all ties into how Becky met Felix and how they re-met again, and what happened in the end. The romantic comedy movie–its archetypes, charms, and detriments–are the underpinnings of the whole story. We live in an age when this genre largely defines the female viewer in movie theaters. There is always at least one romantic comedy at any multiplex. If I’m tackling questions about femininity, that is something I need to explore. (And interesting side note: most romantic comedies are written and directed by men.)

And other reasons…blah blah blah.

On your website, you speak of the risks of writing this novel—“huge,” you called them.  The first risk you mention seems a personal one, standing on a cliff in a high wind.  The second is writing religion into the story.  Did those risks pay off?

Hm, I’m not sure. That’s tough. The risk paid off for me personally as a reader because I wrote the book I wanted to read. I know the risk paid off for those readers who have sent me personal notes of thanks for this novel, but not for many others. So how do we judge the success of anything overall? If it was a blessing to one single reader, is that enough? I knew it would be risky to write a “genre-less” story about a religious main character, and I would be very, very hesitant to do it again. The judgements against this book and against me personally have been loud at times. I’ve never had this experience before–I’d always felt that my home state and my home religion were very supportive of me as an artist and a person, so it can be a little bewildering when that support is weakened. I don’t regret a single word of the book and feel so privileged that I got to write this story, but the next time, would I be able to turn off the shouting voices? I don’t know. It’s been interesting from an intellectual standpoint. I used to have people ask me all the time to please write a book about an LDS character. But there was an unspoken caveat there, I realize. LDS readers largely want a certain kind of LDS character–one who represents them personally, or perhaps the ideal of themselves, so that the book can positively represent this religion to the rest of the world. I failed at that wish for many readers. Inevitably. Of course, that was not my intention. A book written with that goal in mind would have self-imploded. The wonderful thing I’ve learned is there is no LDS stereotype! No one can agree on what it means to be an “ideal” LDS person. That should be good news.

What have been some of the reactions to the religious material in the novel?

All over the place. I’d say in general, I’ve had the most positive responses from non-LDS Utahns and LDS non-Utahns. I wonder if it’s harder for LDS Utahns, because Becky is one, and if she doesn’t represent the reader personally, then they have a hard time with her. And for non-LDS non-Utahns, while I’ve had many wonderful responses, I think many are a little uncomfortable with the presence of religion. Usually religion in a non-religious book is the big “issue” of the story. The religious person is evil or else questioning and ultimately rejecting it. It’s rare to read about a character whose religion is just a fact of their personality, especially when that religion is Mormonism. The reaction has confirmed for me that I cannot possibly anticipate how each reader will read a story or try to make it work for everyone. I have to write to myself and hope the book finds kindred spirit readers, whoever and wherever they may be.

Clearly, writing a character’s death in the novel was difficult.  I found reading the first nightclub scene just as disturbing.  In that scene, Becky and Felix face the first hard test of what they have between them.  Working out the trouble their actions give rise to requires finer qualities, such as patience and restraint—rather like in a marriage.  At this point in the story, they pay the price for their bond.  The tensions of that scene open the way for a new kind of story.  Where did that scene come from? How did writing it affect you?

It’s interesting that you mention that scene. It was one of the most important scenes in the book for me, a lynch pin of the plot… Okay, I went on to explain why it was important, what the scene meant in terms of Becky’s character arc and where it allowed her, Mike, and Felix to go later on, how it set up the story for a moment of grace, etc., and then I deleted it. Whenever I find myself explaining these sorts of things, I feel wrong about it. I try not to be the Voice of Authority. Once the author says what things Mean, I fear it takes away a reader’s right and ability to decide for herself. The true magic of storytelling never happens in the book but in the mind of each reader. Ooh, that sounds hokey, but I believe it passionately! I can talk about the writing process and more general things, but I try not to pontificate about specific meaning in my own books. At least not in writing. Get me in private, serve me a couple of milkshakes, and I’ll tell you everything.

It’s a deal.  In milkshakes veritas, as the Romans liked to say.

Part Two will post 3/16.

Title: Moses and Aron

Poet: Will Bishop

Publication Info: 2009, The Fob Bible, published by Peculiar Pages

Submitted by: Theric Jepson

Why?: Th. writes: “.

If Will and I weren’t both Mormon, I don’t suppose I could give this poem as heavily a Mormon reading as I do. To me, this is the Mormon Moses and the Mormon Aaron. It will be fun to discuss why.”

Participate:

All Payday Poetry posts so far

Click here to fill out the Payday Poetry form

Here’s the link to the spreadsheet so you can see what’s already been submitted

Here’s a link to the kick off post with a list of possible sources

After finishing part 3 with a reading of Timothy Liu’s short poem, “The Tree that Knowledge Is”—a reading based in and flowing from a nodal model of Mormon culture—I fully intended to move into an extended exploration of Waterman’s suggestions for Mormon criticism: 1) read with an eye toward the plurality of modern identity, focusing particularly on the tensions this multiplicity creates within the text and between the text and the culture it springs from (which opens the way to engage Terryl Givens’ critical taxonomy from People of Paradox) and 2), “[i]nformed by cultural studies/new literary historicism methodologies, [...] place [...] [Mormon literature] in conversation with a number of other contemporary texts to examine ways [...] [this literature] help[s] explain Mormon—and [...] [any other aspect of cultural identity]—experience at a certain historical moment.”

But my intentions have changed, partially because of several Twitter-sations I’ve been involved in lately with MoJo (@MoriahJovan), Theric (@thmazing), and William (@motleyvision) about Mormon lit. In fact, Saturday I came to this realization (in a series of Tweets): after wondering how the Mormon literary community has “been having the same critical conversation for 30 years,” I pursued the thought that part of this may stem from the relative invisibility of the community’s non-prescriptive critical cache—that is, the offline venues through which Mormon literary criticism has developed/been presented and published. Dialogue, Irreantum, and Sunstone contain some of this work, but I sense I’m missing something because I don’t have access to the thirty years worth of proceedings from the AML annual meeting.

As a corollary to this epiphany, I realized that, for some reason, much of the online conversation about Mormon lit centers on drawing boundaries for the enterprise rather than on discussing specific works in a critical way. And, more importantly, that I need to spend more time exploring specific works of Mormon lit. So with this in mind, I’m springboarding into that renewed commitment today by (re)posting a short reading I offered on my own blog of Emma Lou Thayne’s poem, “The Rose Jar,” a text ripe with the tensions of memory and community and that I’ve read against another text of similar ripeness.

And with that: on we go.

* * * *

Disturbing the dust on a bowl on rose leaves…

-T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” line 17.

In the opening section of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton,” the poet muses on the interconnections and “unredeemab[ility]” of time (line 5): “What might have been,” he says, “is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in the world of speculation” (6-8), the business of imagination and memory. He opens the door to this possibility when he hears

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind. (11-5)

The poet’s job, then, this implies, is to pursue the footfalls of memory into places we’ve never been. “But to what purpose,” he asks, does “[d]isturbing the dust on a[n imagined] bowl of rose-leaves” serve (16-7)? Why pursue these “echoes / [that i]nhabit the garden[?] Shall we [indeed] follow” them “through the […] gate” of meaning; “[i]nto our first world, shall we follow / The deception of the thrush?” (17-8, 20-2). And yet the voyage into and through deception, he suggests, is the end “which is always present” (48). So perhaps, though the past is ultimately “unredeemable,” we can redeem ourselves, our identities, as the poet’s efforts suggest, in the myriad possible passageways of and rhetorical passages written by memory.

Emma Lou Thayne takes this poetic cue in “The Rose Jar” wherein she quite literally (if we can take her at her word) disturbs the dust in her grandma’s jar of rose petals, stirring up the fragrance of rose and memory as she runs her fingers and her mind over the intricate surface of the “four inch cloisonne [jar] on pointed golden legs / fat as a Buddha tummy” (lines 9-10). Finding this jar in the “cedar drawer” of her “Grandma’s standing metal trunk” (1-2), she enters the intersection of several memories, some her own, some others’. The cedar musk reminds her of “some Arabian tale read by Father / in the hall between bedrooms to say goodnight” (5-6); the rose petals call forth “five generations of fragile crinkles” in lives “once supple, fresh,” but now only “fragile” memories (7-8); the jar itself inspires visions of “centuries of Chinese hav[ing] their way” in an intricate culture, their “careful hands [...] pluck[ing] each [intricate] piece in place” (18-9); and the fragrance of it all, of this “holy mash,” becomes “tiny gusts / of history waft[ing]” community rituals—”the gatherings of births, graduations, / weddings, funerals, celebrations”—”into decades collecting / but never filling [the jar] to the top,” instead infusing the space of life, of memory with the “subtle, still surprising breath of God” (20-7).

And that, I think, is one reason we disturb the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves: because doing so draws us together in bonds of imagination, kinship, and shared memory, such that, like Adam and Eve, we are infused with the breath of God and so become living souls, living communities.

And that, I think, is one thing poets and poetry, critics and criticism are for.

Discuss at your leisure.

“Works of fiction, novels, tales and light reading of that description ought not to be read by young people. They are not food for your mind…”[1]

George Q. Cannon wasn’t the first to voice this sentiment when he wrote it in 1866; LDS Church leaders had warned members about fiction for most of the Brigham Young administration. Nor was Cannon the last to make this claim and by the mid 1880s, with the railroad bringing thousands of copies of works of fiction to Utah each year, the brethren were worried about the effect of these works on the youth of the Church.

During the preceding two decades the Church had taken steps to strengthen the youth, founding the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association in 1869 and the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association in 1875. A magazine for the YMMIA, The Contributor, was founded in 1879. George Q. Cannon’s Juvenile Instructor began publishing books that same year, providing an alternative to outside fiction, but principally in the form of historical accounts, biography and memoir (such as that found in the Faith Promoting Series Cannon published through the Juvenile Instructor starting in 1879). This locally produced literature soon became known as “Home Literature.” Still, many Church members ignored the counsel and continued to read outside fiction.

Orson F. Whitney, then Bishop of the Salt Lake City 18th Ward (but well known as the former city editor of the Deseret News), suggested a different solution to this problem in 1888, substituting sanction for the previous prohibition. He asked Mormon authors to offer an alternative, a “Home Literature” that was on par with the best the world could produce, even in fiction. Citing the injunction in the Doctrine and Covenants to “Seek learning, even by study and also by faith,” Whitney said:

The formation of a home literature is directly in the line and spirit of this injunction. Literature means learning, and it is from the “best books” we are told to seek it. This does not merely mean the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the book of Doctrine and Covenants, Church works and religious writings–though these indeed are “the best books,” and will ever be included in and lie at the very basis of our literature. But it also means history, poetry, philosophy, art and science, languages, government—all truth in fact, wherever found, either local or general, and relating to times past, present or to come.

Whitney went on to predict, “We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.”[2]

The effect of this address was to open the door to fiction written by Mormons, especially in the pages of the auxiliary magazines of the Church. The first work of Home Literature fiction appeared in the pages of The Contributor, the magazine of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA, forerunner of the Young Men’s program), just three months later.[3] Other LDS periodicals, the Juvenile Instructor, the Young Women’s Journal, the Improvement Era and the Relief Society Magazines[4] all carried short fiction (in addition to the poetry already included in LDS periodicals since the first issue of the first LDS periodical in 1832). An independent magazine in Utah, Parry’s Monthly, also started up to present faithful stories to young people.[5]

Other works of literature soon followed. Just over a decade later LDS readers could enjoy novels (especially Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon (1898)), often in book form after they had been published serially in Church magazines. Drama soon followed with the debut of Corianton, by Orestes Bean, in 1902.

This sudden acceptance of fiction coincided with George Q. Cannon’s own plans, since he started publishing works under his own name, George Q. Cannon and Sons, beginning in 1889 with Nephi Andersen’s Young Folks History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By 1891, Cannon was publishing 3-5 titles each year under his own name while still publishing 1-3 new titles a year under the Juvenile Instructor name.[6]

However, most of this was till not fiction. Cannon himself published his only fiction title in 1898, Anderson’s Added Upon. His successors slowly built on that publication, and it wasn’t until the 1920s that the LDS market produced more than one novel in a year (including self or privately published titles and titles published by national publishers).[7] Instead, short and serialized fiction published in the LDS Church’s magazines remained the dominant form, with most of the magazines publishing at least a couple stories in each issue, adding up to 35 to 50 stories a year.

Like with the Juvenile Instructor, these efforts, along with Cannon’s printing for others, led to a bookstore that sold both the works that Cannon printed and published and works that came from other publishers and printers, including those outside of Utah. Eventually, George Q. Cannon and Sons became the principal store for purchasing Mormon works and the principal bookstore in Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, the 1890 manifesto and subsequent elimination of anti-polygamy prosecution, along with Utah statehood in 1896, eliminated the need to keep Church assets in private hands, and in 1897 the Church started bringing the auxiliary magazines under its ownerhsip. The Contributor was closed in 1896, and the Improvement Era was started the following year to replace it. The Young Woman’s Journal was sold to the YLMIA in 1897. And George Q. Cannon sold the Juvenile Instructor magazine and bookstore to the Deseret Sunday School Union in 1900. Cannon also transferred the George Q. Cannon and Sons publishing venture and bookstore to the Deseret News, the Church-owned newspaper in Salt Lake City that year, just a year before he died. While the Deseret News bookstore and press was mostly successful, the Sunday School’s operation regularly ran deficits, requiring regular investments from the Church to stay afloat. To solve these problems, the Church merged the two operations in 1919 to create Deseret Book.[8]

[2] Whitney, Orson F. “Home Literature.” The Contributor, July 1888. The text was given as an address at the YMMIA Conference on June 3, 1888.

[3] My brief review of the LDS periodicals in 1888 indicates that the first work of fiction published after Whitney’s talk was Augusta Joyce Crocheron’s “The Boom”, The Contributor, September 1888, pp. 417-420.

[4] Church magazines carried fiction until 1974.

[5] Esplin, Ross S. A Survey of Fiction Written by Mormon Authors and Appearing in Mormon Periodicals Between 1900 and 1945. Unpublished master’s thesis, BYU, 1949. p. 6.

[6] My own analysis of data drawn from Worldcat. This database can be found online at (http://www.worldcat.org).

[7] My own analysis of data drawn from the Mormon Literature and Creative Arts database. This database can be found online at (http://mormonlit.byu.edu).

[8] Knowles, Eleanor. “Deseret Book Company, 125 Years of Inspiration, Information, and Ideas.” Deseret Book, 1991.

A formal call for submissions will be posted in early April, but we wanted to pre-announce the project now in order to get the creative juices flowing and test if this is of any interest at all to AMV’s readers (and anyone else who gets wind of it).

Three things that I will note now:

1. Theric Jepson and I will serve as co-principals on the project. It will be published by Peculiar Pages. We don’t have all the details hammered out, but we’re fairly far along, and I’m confident you will own a copy of this book by the end of next year.
2. We will provide more specific direction in the call to submissions, but we intend for the concept (Monsters & Mormons) to be interpreted across a wide range of genres and art forms and high/low/middle-browness-es.
3. However, we also envision the project as very much coming out of the key pulp authors and riffing on, building upon, paying homage to and perhaps even satirizing their work. Which doesn’t mean that we are abandoning the literary, either. We hope to build a hybridized anthology with a pulpy core.

Any thoughts? I don’t know that Theric and I will be able to answer all of your questions (assuming ya’ll even have any), but if you have strong desires, radical middle ideas, or simply yeas or nays, cheers or hisses, make them known.

Finally: Yes, this is a project of cultural re-appropriation. I could go on at length about all the reasons I dig the conceptual underpinnings of this concept. But I won’t (and I’ll try to keep things brief in the call for submissions). Because it really doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that we all have fun, and that’s the primary reason I decided to take this project on — it’s time for us to cut loose in the world of Mormon letters.

In keeping with WIZ’s mission to help develop, inspire, and promote literary nature and science writing in the Mormon writing community, we encourage poets to help call an end to winter and midwife the birth of a milder season, a season of gardens, returning flocks, and light that takes the tarnish off the blood.

Contest rules

* Submit poems to wilderness@motleyvision.org between March 7 and March 31.
* All poems submitted must be original, published or unpublished work.  If the work has been previously published, please provide publication information and be sure you can grant us rights to re-publish the work.
* Please submit poems 50 lines long or less.
* All poems submitted must be spring-themed or at least mention spring.
* Poets may submit up to 3 poems.

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In short, Salvador became a more important novel to me through the re-read.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first, though: it is not a work of magical realism. Nobody makes hard claims for that, but the term is still sometimes invoked in relation to the novel. It’s easy to see why — it takes place in El Salvador and there’s a certain lushness and vividness and poetics to the imagery — swarms of butterflies, sparkling fireflies, the cry of a jaguar in the night, the smell of gardenias, or the impression that the fruits on the mango tree are decapitated heads. But any values or magic assigned to the nature imagery are provided by Julie. She experiences El Salvador as magical (until everything goes to hell). Of course, the imagery is very important to the story. It feeds in to Julie’s desire to find a sort of Zion, and find it in her Uncle Johnny’s project to create a commune, a branch, a Zarahemla for the natives. And even when everything gets dashed down, part of what saves her is that even when illusions crumble, the rich reality of the land and of its people remains.

But about that project: Salvador is, as far as I am aware, the first great novel about RMs. In fact, as far as I know, it’s the only one that accomplishes quite the pointed drama that it does. Yes, the story is about Julie coming to terms with her divorce and with her mom and her faith and how her mom and her faith led her to think that she could save a guy by marrying him and what it means now that she realizes that she couldn’t save him. All that internal working through of things happens, though, amidst a drama, a conflict that centers on three returned missionaries who return — Julie’s Uncle Johnny, who goes back to El Salvador, marries a local girl and attempts to build his Zarahemla; Julie’s father, now a Vietnam vet and lapsed Mormon who accompanies Julie and her mom to El Salvador to visit Johnny and grudgingly gets pulled in to his work; and David Piggott, the ex -compadre of Johnny and Julie’s father who has also carved himself out a life in El Salvador, but has done so by working for an American company, by becoming District President of the LDS Church in El Salvador and who lives in a big house with a maids whom he has dress in blue livery. As missionaries, these there young men had big, idealistic plans to continue their work in El Salvador after their release and after finishing college. Two of them actually do it, but choose different paths. The third goes of to Vietnam and loses his faith. As the novel progresses, it’s clear that the three men are still struggling against each other, struggling to justify the turns they took and the struggle centers on Julie, who is going to draw her in or warn her off, and on Marta, Johnny’s wife, who is pregnant, whose strength is fading, whose life so far has been filled with miscarriages. Salvador is about priesthood and patriarchy and love and unrighteous dominion and selling out and going apostate and trying to recapture or run away from the intensity of the call to serve.

Of course, the novel is also very much about Julie and Marta and Julie’s mother, and for all the shocking revelations and power struggles, it is the experience of motherhood and the female body and female relationships that very much prevails. In fact, part of what makes Salvador such a fascinating, well-written novel is that there is a fullness of female and male experience here. I can’t think of a more balanced, yet bountiful exploration of some of the key issues of the LDS gendered experience.

I haven’t even gotten to Shakespeare, and the native Salvadorans, and the politics, but I’ve gone on long enough so I’ll just mention one more thing: Salvador also contains a fascinating moment related to the Mormon yearning for Book of Mormon archeology. That it plays out in the context that it does, featuring the characters that it does, featuring the conflict in world views that it does, is quite, quite delicious.

I still have a couple of issues with the novel. For example, considering the thematic use a couple of the natives are put too, I would have liked to have seen more of their Mormonism. And I’m not sure I completely buy the irreal, half-native, fully caught up in the vision, Shakespeare-quoting cousin of Julie’s and some of his interactions with her.

But the experience of revisiting this novel was an intense one, a good one, and gave me a greater appreciation for it. It’s a major touchstone in the development of the Mormon novel, and I think it sometimes gets lost because of the way the second part of Margaret Young’s writing career has turned out (which features important, even crucial work, but not work that exactly builds upon what she does in Salvador). It deserves to be revisited. Often.