After covering a lot of ground and then going in to some specific ideas for the types of Mormon novels that he would like to read, Thayer writes:

Contemporary Mormon life itself helps to create this need for a serious fiction. A faith that believes in perfection, a life filed with attainable goals, large beautiful families, the near Second Coming, personal revelation, daily guidance from the Holy Ghost, eternal life with an eternal family, righteousness materially rewarded in this life, and degrees of glory invites interpretation, explanation. In short, is a faith that invite novelists. Because we as faithful, intelligent Mormons want to help to understand it all, to see how it works, or might work. And this is often best done in the privacy of a novel that the readers enter into imaginatively to experience vicariously with the protagonist all that he or she experiences, understands, and learns in the process.

For example, what is spiritual experience? We Mormons talka lot today about the spirit — feeling the spirit, being guided by the spirit, following the spirit, seeking the spirit, losing the spirit, being filled with the spirit, leading a spiritual life. We don’t talk much about living a religious life, but living a spiritual life. So what is a spiritual life, to folow the spirit? Are we really talking about experiencing the Holy Ghost, and therefore should write spirit with a capital S? If so, what does it feel like? How do you know if ou’re leading such a life? Is it only feeling, emotions, impressions? Is the intellect, the mind, objectivity, reason a part of spirituality? In what ways are our spiritual lives powerful, compelling, directing, satisfying, divine? As Conrad said, the novelist’s task is to make experience, something to be tasted, seen, heard, felt, and smelled. A realistic serious novel could create characters, images, situations that would help readers experience spirituality, help them hear, feel, and see it, know what it is and is not. (39)

I don’t know how well we accomplish this, but I like this notion of making experience and helping understand a lot.

• Why he writes Mormon fiction
• What he means by “serious” Mormon fiction
• What he thinks about the “great Mormon novel”
• Why serious Mormon fiction will offend Mormon readers (but in a useful way)
• What he defines as the Mormon audience and how thinks it can be reached
• The state of Mormon publishing and what he thinks is missing (in particular he sees a need for “a major popular web site for serious Mormon literature” [and also suggests that it might need a rating system, which we have also discussed around these parts])
• Some theories on why Mormon literature “doesn’t flourish as it might be expected to”
• How he answers LDS-centric criticism of serious fiction
• Possible “themes, conflicts and plots” for Mormon novelists and some of the types of Mormon novels he would personally like to read
• How Mormon doctrine might inform the themes of serious Mormon fiction
• Who is going to write these Mormon novels (not his creative writing students, he says)
• The craft of fiction writing
• The fact that the novelists he is hoping for are likely to be Mormon women (and why)

That’s a lot of ground to cover and Thayer basically tackles here all of the major issues of the field and ties them together and sums it all up, and it’s well worth seeking out.

*It’s a pity these aren’t better documented.

Favorite review: “Modern Mormon Family: Angela Hallstrom’s Bound on Earth” by Scott Hales. I find Scott’s writing style quite winning and charming in this review.

Favorite essay*: “Wrestling with God: Invoking Scriptural Mythos and Language in LDS Literary Works” by James Goldberg. His other essay is funnier and more interesting, but this is solid, critical (and critical) work. I haven’t read something that feels like it really moves the field in awhile. This does — both descriptively and prescriptively.

Favorite poem: “Disco Hero” by Liz Chapman. Uniquely Mormon, very funny, and totally approachable. Just what I need from poetry that appears in Mormon journals.

Favorite short story: “Flight” by Courtney Miller Santo. I love that it’s an old couple and how their oldness and their coupleness plays out and how real, yet unique, yet fictional it seems. I enjoyed the background presence of the mommy blogger daughter (although it’s maybe a little too hammered home in the end). The imagery with the hummingbirds somehow feels like it’s adding to the whole mix without screaming allegory. Very nicely done.

*Note that I’m bundling the critical essays and creative nonfiction, which I probably shouldn’t, but I see them as all on the same continuum and so react to them as such.

AMVer Tyler Chadwick won on honorable mention for his poetry. I hope that means that it will be published in a future issue. Although with only two issues a year and 5 poetry, 5 fiction and 4 essay winners (including honorable mentions), that’s pretty much both issues filled right there. I guess that’s why the publication no longer accepts rolling submissions.

I entered two stories in the contest this year: one was a piece of near future, post-apocalyptic science fiction that takes place in the same world as my 2010 contest entry; the other was a piece of contemporary literary fiction that takes place at an MLA conference in San Francisco. They definitely represent the two major tracks of my current fiction writing interests, and I’m currently wondering which one to go down.

Also last week: Volume 13, No. 1 of Irreantum arrived in the mail. I have yet to read it, but I did flip through it. AMVer Jonathan Langford contributes a review of Doug Thayer’s The Tree House. And several of our favorite commenters, including Scott Hales, Darlene Young, and James Goldberg have can be found in the table of contents. I also found myself looking at the cover and interior illustrations and thinking “huh, that style seems familiar to me.” Sure enough, Monsters & Mormon graphic novel artist Galen Smith contributed the art to this issue. I look forward to digging into it further.

I received a renewal notice with this issue. Printed at the bottom of the notice is – Irreantum featuring the NEW Mormon literature: “thoughtful, provocative, nuanced, articulate”

click here for a larger version of the photo

I finally unpacked the box with all my older copies of Irreantum and found a shelf for the entire print run. At some point I’ll put them in strict chronological order and also figure out which one I’m missing and see if I can track down a copy.

This is the third and final entry in this series. The first part of our interview was about Ms Hallstom’s novel-in-stories Bound on Earth. The second was about her editorship of the literary journal Irreantum. This third portion is about the short-story collection, Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction, that she edited for Zarahemla Books (review).

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Let’s start with what criteria a story had to meet to even be considered for inclusion. What were the ground rules going in to this anthology?

I went into this project looking for the best stories I could find written by, for, or about Mormons over the last fifteen years or so. (Originally, I’d intended to limit the date range from 2000 to the present, but there were a number of stories published in the late 90s that I felt needed to be included, so I abandoned that idea.) Not only did I want the stories I selected to represent quality literature, but I felt it was important to include stories with recognizably Mormon elements. Most of the stories contain overt references to Mormon culture or theology, and all of the stories, in my opinion, explore Mormon themes. I also wanted the authors in this anthology to have a background in LDS culture and theology–I didn’t consider stories written “about” Mormonism by writers without close personal ties to the religion. And, finally, I wanted to make sure that the anthology’s content wouldn’t disqualify it from being taught in a BYU class. In other words, while I welcomed challenging and thought-provoking stories, I wanted to keep things PG-13.

Obviously, in order to be considered “complete” as an anthology, some authors had to be included no matter what. How did the selection process differ for those authors? I.e., were you more concerned with picking a “typical” Doug Thayer story, or just what you thought was his best?

There were definitely some big names that I knew must be included. In the beginning, I either purchased or borrowed from the library a number of important short story collections: Lewis Horne’s The House of James, Brady Udall’s Letting Loose the Hounds, Mary Clyde’s Survival Rates, Orson Scott Card’s Keeper of Dreams, Darrell Spencer’s Caution: Men in Trees, Paul Rawlins’ No Lie Like Love, Todd Robert Petersen’s Long After Dark, Margaret Blair Young’s Love Chains, Phyllis Barber’s Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination. (I include all these titles because anybody interested in Mormon lit and/or the short story should check them out.)

As I read through each collection, I noted the story or stories that I liked the most and that I felt best fit the vision of Dispensation. Often, the “Mormon-ness” of a story was an important factor as I made decisions. For example, “The 12-Inch Dog” is probably my favorite story from Darrell Spencer’s Caution: Men in Trees, but it’s not particularly Mormon. The story we ended up using, the also excellent “Blood Work,” was a better fit because it dealt head-on with Mormon characters and themes. Orson Scott Card’s story “Christmas at Helaman’s House” was one of the four stories categorized under the heading “Mormon Stories” in his short story collection, and I felt it was important to include a Mormon story from Card in Dispensation. (My favorite Card story from Keeper of Dreams is the dystopian “Elephants of Poznan,” and while it isn’t Mormon fiction, it’s a really cool story, and I was glad to be able to reprint it in the most recent issue of Irreantum.)

I also took into account author preference when dealing with well-known authors, especially when there were two or three stories that I enjoyed equally. Some authors pointed me in the direction of stories I didn’t know existed. Paul Rawlins, for example, had recently published “The Garden” in the literary magazine Image and sent it to me after I approached him about a different story, and I was so happy he did. “The Garden” is one of my favorite stories in the book.

Some stories you originally discovered and published in Irreantum. How did your past history with those stories affect your objectivity?

Well, to be honest, I never felt conflicted about including stories from Irreantum. In fact, only two of the twenty-eight stories—Jack Harrell’s “Calling and Election” and Darin Cozzens’ “Light of The New Day”—were chosen from the many stories I’ve come in contact with as I’ve worked on Irreantum. Both Cozzens and Harrell are important and accomplished enough Mormon short story writers that they would have been included in this anthology even without the Irreantum connection, and both of these stories show them at the top of their game. Both stories won 1st place in the Irreantum fiction contest, also, and I was interested in highlighting stories that have won important contests.

Same question to the nth power regarding your story “Thanksgiving.”

Unlike the Irreantum stories, I was quite conflicted about using one of my own stories in the anthology. Chris Bigelow (Zarahemla’s publisher) and I discussed it, and decided that since “Thanksgiving” had won awards from both the Utah Arts Council and Dialogue magazine it would be an appropriate choice. And for me, personally, I’ve felt my writer-self getting slowly swallowed up by my editor-self over the last couple of years—between Dispensation and Irreantum and Segullah and teaching, I’ve had very little time for my own writing. I didn’t get into this business to become an editor, although I’ve appreciated the editing opportunities that have come my way. But my primary intention has always been to be a writer, and if Chris agreed that “Thanksgiving” should be included, I didn’t want to sacrifice my writer-self to my editor-self yet again.

I noticed that a high percentage of stories are from outsider perspectives — characters who are not LDS or on the outs with that heritage. Which suggests to me that you to some measure agree with the oft-stated maxim that the way to write great LDS literature is to get at it from the outside, not the inside. Comment?

Well, I disagree with this question on a number of levels. First, a “high percentage” of the stories aren’t from outsider perspectives, in my opinion. By my count, in seventeen of the twenty-eight stories, the point-of-view character would describe him or herself as a Mormon. In many of the stories, the point-of-view character might not be Mormon, but his or her interaction with a Mormon is the crux of the story (“Buckeye the Elder,” “Healthy Partners,” etc.). Only four stories are written from the perspective of characters who are “on the outs” with Mormonism (by which you mean, I suppose, that the character makes it known that he or she was once an active Mormon but isn’t anymore).

And I’ve got to say, thumbing through the anthology in order to make an accounting of which point-of-view character is Mormon enough has been a little irritating. LDS writers should be able to write from the point-of-view of all sorts of people, and Mormon stories should be able to include the points-of-view of those with all sorts of Mormon experiences (“inside” or “outside”), without these choices being translated into a sweeping generalization about what kind of literature a Mormon author ought to write. Some of these stories were written by believing Mormons about non-Mormons. Some were written by former Mormons about believing Mormons. And drawing these distinctions, frankly, is giving me a headache. Honestly, the “insider-ness” or “outsider-ness” of each point-of-view character never even occurred to me as I was editing this anthology. I just wanted to include strong fiction. This isn’t to say that I didn’t reject some stories with antagonistic “outsider” characters. I did do that. But not because the narrator was on the outs with Mormonism. It was because the story was too agenda-driven to work as good literature. I rejected stories with an “insider” main character if they were excessively agenda-driven, too.

As far as the “oft-repeated maxim” goes (and I suppose you’re referring to Wallace Stegner’s observation that the “Great Mormon Novel” will be penned by someone who has left the church, then come “part way” back? http://www.motleyvision.org/2009/abandon-all-hope-mormon-lit-cant-be-great/): I wholeheartedly reject that idea. Some of my favorite stories in this anthology were written by believing Mormons, about believing Mormons, so, obviously, it’s possible for an insider to write excellent fiction. If I don’t believe this is possible, what in the world am I doing as a writer and an editor and a teacher operating from within Mormon culture? But this idea has already been debated quite vociferously on AMV, and this interview is already pretty lengthy, so I’ll leave it at that.

Describe briefly, if you can, the gathering process. Where did you look? How many stories did you read? Did you try to balance the number of story types? Were some inclusion decisions made based on how hard or easy permission was to obtain?

At the very beginning of the process, I asked a number of people I trust to recommend writers and stories. I also got some great suggestions from AML members, both via the AML-list and the now-defunct AML forum. From that, I compiled a list and started reading. I got my hands on the previously-mentioned short story collections, and I also read a number of stories published in Mormon magazines and in mainstream literary journals. Once I’d worked through all the recommendations, I simply started reading back issues of Irreantum, Dialogue, and Sunstone, and found some great stories there that I would have otherwise overlooked. It was important to me that this anthology not only showcase well-known writers, but also highlight up-and-coming Mormon writers who are incredibly talented but not (yet) as famous.

I don’t know if I can count the number of stories I read. I just know I read a lot of them. Tons. For about six months, almost all my fiction reading time was dedicated solely to the short stories I was considering for this collection. And, yes, I did try to have some balance: I wanted to be sure to include stories with an international or multicultural perspective; I wanted to include some speculative fiction; I wanted to include both traditional and more experimental fiction-writing methods, and so on. I was also acutely aware that I had more male writers than female writers from which to choose. Although I’d hoped at the outset to have equal representation by both men and women, in the end I found myself with ten stories by women and eighteen by men. Which is to say that, while balance was certainly on my mind, ultimately the quality of each individual story was the most important factor in making my decisions.

As far as permissions are concerned, there were a few stories that were important enough that we were willing to pay for them. Most previous publishers (and authors holding rights) graciously allowed us to reprint the stories without a fee, which was very helpful. We were able to publish all the stories we wanted to publish, which was a relief, since our budget for reprint rights was pretty small.

Did you determine book length first and choose the right number of stories to fit, or did you pick the right stories and see how long it was? If the former, how hard was it to narrow them down?

Initially, I’d planned to choose twenty stories. After my first round of cuts, I had twenty-five. Then a few more must-have stories pushed their way under my nose, and the number increased to twenty-eight, and at that point we had to put a stop to it, mainly in order to keep the price of the book under $20. And even with twenty-eight stories, which is a lot, there were still a number of stories that were difficult to cut.

Finally, to get us back the title of this series, how did you decide what order to arrange the selected stories in?

Some of it was personal preference on my part. I wanted to make sure that my favorite stories, for example, were spaced throughout the anthology, so the reader’s attention would be continuously engaged. What I’ve realized, though, is that with the short story, one person’s taste can be so wildly different from another’s that my favorite stories might be another literature-lover’s least favorite. Stories that I would call home runs have been other people’s “ho hum”s. I should have expected this (in all my years working on the Irreantum fiction contest, for example, never once has there been a story that was a unanimous first place winner among the committee members when we sat down to begin deliberations)—but it’s still surprising to me the range of responses a short story call elicit. I also wanted the arrangement of stories to ensure that similar stories weren’t back-to-back . . . although some stories were similar stylistically but dissimilar thematically, and vice versa. In the end, I simply wanted the anthology to take its readers on a journey to both familiar and unexpected places, to introduce us to both recognizable and surprising characters, and to explore both time-honored and exciting new themes. It’s my hope that Dispensation has accomplished this goal, and that the stories in the book will be read and enjoyed by all sorts of readers.

By now, I’m sure all of AMV’s readers have seen the announcement of this year’s finalists for the Whitney Awards. Congratulations to AMV’s Jonathan Langford for being selected as a finalist in the General Fiction category. He is also eligible for the best novel by a new author award. Full disclosure: I am not a Whitney voter. I believe Theric is. I don’t know if anybody else associated with AMV is. Updated disclosure, 3/21/2010: Rob Wells convinced me to be a Whitney Awards voter. I will be for sure voting in the Speculative Fiction and Historical Fiction categories. It is also quite likely that I will be able to finish reading the novels in the General Fiction category, as well.

I’ve compiled a quick breakdown of who published the finalists. It’s a pretty decent mix, actually:

Covenant:  8

Deseret Book/Shadow Mountain: 5

Small/Indie/Self-Publishers: 8

National/International Publishers: 9

The YA category is dominated by national publishers as is Speculative Fiction. Covenant dominates Mystery/Suspense and splits Historical  with DB/Shadow Mountain (in fact David Farland’s self published In The Company of Angels is the only historical novel not published by a DB-owned imprint). Both General Fiction and Romance have a mix, with fully 4/5 of the Romance novels coming out of smaller Mormon presses. Notable titles not selected for the General Fiction category are Rift by Todd Robert Petersen (Zarahemla Books) and The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury). Since I’ve only read one novel in that category (No Going Back), I don’t know if that’s an oversight or not and don’t really care — in any awards process some titles are going to be left out.

Out of the finalists, there are three that I’m very interested in reading: Alma by H.B. Moore, Gravity vs. the Girl by Riley Noehren and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. And since I have yet to read any of Gerald Lund’s novels and DB sent me an unsolicited review copy, I plan on getting to The Undaunted as soon as I finish my book on the Etruscans. It’s a very hefty tome which means I can’t take it with me on my commute, which is where I get most of my reading done.

Irreantum’s new submissions policy

From Irreantum co-editor Angela Hallstrom:

Our submission window for our fiction and essay contests is from January 1 to May 31 each year.  Beginning in January 2010, all unsolicited fiction and creative nonfiction submissions received during our submission window will be considered for that year’s Irreantum Fiction Contest and the Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay contest, respectively, and must be submitted according to contest rules. Any submission received outside the submission window will not be considered; however, we encourage authors to consider resubmitting the following year after January 1st.

So, in short: we will only accept unsolicited fiction and creative nonfiction during our submission window (Jan 1-May 31); all unsolicited fiction and creative nonfiction will be considered for our annual contest; all submissions must adhere to contest rules. In addition, simply because a story or essay does not place in our annual contest does not mean that we might not consider publishing that piece.

Poetry, critical essay, and review submissions will still be considered year-round and are not associated with any contests.

I suppose this makes sense, especially since with two issues per year, one is already filled with the contest winners so all you really need are 3-5 additional pieces of fiction and 1-3 pieces of creative nonfiction to round out the year. The comment about resubmitting is nice, too. But since that’s the new plan: any chance we could get the word count upped to 10k? Or how about 17,500 (the word count the SFWA considers a novelette)?

Mormon Artists Group profiles Hildebrando de Melo

Finally, Mormon Artists Group has posted an interview with LDS Angolan painter Hildebrando de Melo (click on what’s new — from some strange reason MAG doesn’t provide direct URLs to its individual pages). You can view de Melo’s work at the Agora Gallery website.

P.S. Andrew scooped me, but in case you didn’t see his comment — Signature Books is back in publishing mode and has posted a list of forthcoming titles. I’m very much looking forward to the collection of Jack Harrell short stories that is due out this May.

It all starts with Eugene England

As far as I know, the first use of the term radical middle in relation to Mormon narrative art is in Eugene England’s Dialogue essay/review “Danger on the Right! Danger on the Left! The Ethics of Recent Mormon Fiction,” which was published in Fall 1999.

In the essay, England challenges two anthologies of short Mormon fiction that had been published in the late ’90s (and, of course, champions his own anthology that had been published in the early ’90s). On page 30 he laments the fact Doug Thayer was not included in either the “right” or “left” anthology even though in England’s opinion his work would be a comfortable fit with both. He writes: “We are suffering, I fear, from a version of the old logical fallacy of the excluded middle, ripping Mormon literature apart to the remarkably similar extremes of right-wing and left-wing piety and cultural correctness and mutual exclusion.” Further down the page he adds: “…too many writers in what might be called the radical middle, who have no simplistic pro-Mormon or anti-Mormon agenda, but try to practice their craft with careful esthetic* skill and ethical insight, can’t seem to get themselves published to a Mormon audience. It’s a shame. I might even say, if I were an extremist, it’s a damn shame.”

An appropriation of a political term

I think it’s clear that England’s use of the term is meant to bring its political meaning in to the realm of Mormon letters — his use of right-wing and left-wing in the essay reinforces this. I don’t know if he further developed what he meant by using this term, although I think the essay itself as well as much of the rest of his oeuvre wonderfully illustrate (more or less) what it means to be in the middle in a radical way when it comes to Mormonism. I believe he also had radical center/radical middle political leanings as well. The radical middle (see the link to the Wikipedia in the previous sentence for a quick summary) has an interesting history in U.S. politics. It’s not necessarily something I subscribe to (although the term is squishy enough that it probably captures some of my admittedly waffling political beliefs), but I think that it’s important to understand not so much what it means, or what policies and political philosophies it encompasses, as why it is specifically deployed in order to understand it’s appeal to Eugene England and his descendants in Mormon letters.

Ross Perot’s Reform Party (at least its early years) and 1996 presidential run is an example of an eruption of the radical middle in to mainstream electoral politics. This is not to say that Ross Perot’s presidential platform equates the radical center in U.S. politics. It can be a difficult thing to define — see for example this list of political thinkers grappling with the idea of centrism/radical center/radical middle. But at its core is a sense of being in between, but in a way that’s energetic.

The radical middle, then, is most often an expression of frustration with two dominant parties/ways/philosophies. It is reactive (which brings with it the weaknesses of reactivity); it is amorphous; it is rather self-conscious and self-important. It is in flux and changes in relation to the two parties that it reacts against. It is always in danger of crystallizing its own orthodoxies and pieties. It is an often uneasy mix of populism and elitism and self-righteousness. It is accused of being wishy-washy and over-optimistic and idealistic by the left- and right-wing. It is anti-authoritarian and anti-Utopian.

All this may or may not transfer over when used in relation to the field of Mormon letters, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the political roots of the term. And as a sidenote, a sector of British Islam uses the term — see The Radical Middle Way — to articulate a fascinating form of modern-day cultural, theological and intellectual form of moderate Islam. The adjectives used on the page I link to — revolutionary, dynamic, proactive, relevant, young, open, creative, positive, inclusive — show, I think, the appeal of this way of defining a movement (we’ll get more in to this with my next two posts).

Irreantum and appropriateness

I can’t find any use of the term “radical middle” since England’s essay until the AMVers took it up, but I do want to point out another attempt to articulate that middle way that has been influential. When Chris Bigelow and Benson Parkinson first launched Irreantum in 2001, Parkinson posted an essay to the AML Website that he had previously written for the AML-List back in 1997 (which predates England’s radical middle essay). Titled the “Three Kinds of Appropriateness,” it briefly defines the qualities of over-safe, didactic fiction and angry, anti-institutional Church and pushing-the-content-envelope fiction (and labels them respectively as “completely appropriate” and “shockingly appropriate”) and charts a course between those two that without much exception defines fairly well the course that Irreantum (Ben is a co-founder of the magazine and influenced its original tone and parameters) has taken over its history as well as radical middle publishers like Zarahemla Books and Parables Publishing. It also influences the approach we take here at A Motley Vision and works that navigate it well are those that are most celebrated here (and by the Association for Mormon Letters). There are, of course, exceptions, but anything that gets too didactic (on either side of the spectrum) and that either elides reality too much or on the other hand gets too explicit or touches certain taboos (e.g. offensive stuff about the temple or general authorities) tends to be spurned or simply ignored.

As with any ideological space there are fluctuations in the boundaries over time and differences in opinion among individuals, but, generally, when it comes to the world of Mormon letters this middle way — which Ben Parkinson terms the the broadly appropriate — has been the aim of those working to legitimize Mormon narrative art.

The radical middle at present

I can’t speak for why Boyd chose to invoke the term radical middle in his post kicking off the new AML blog, but it also has had some currency here at AMV, and while I think it’s somewhat obvious why that’s the case, I’m going to explore the middle and the radical of the radical middle in the next two posts in the hopes that forcing me to articulate it and you all to discuss it will further the concept. More tomorrow.

* I’m not sure why England prefers esthetic over aesthetic.

So: What do you think are some major developments that MUST be included in any summary of Mormon literature? And which literary artists, critics, editors, works, and websites MUST be mentioned?

1. The winners of the Irreantum Fiction Contest and the Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay Contest have been announced. Irreantum co-editor Angela Hallstrom wrote in to the AML-list and said that while winning the contest is no guarantee of publication in Irreantum, most likely most of the winners will see their work featured in the magazine. Of note, for the first time the organizers revealed the number of entries — 71 for the fiction contest and 42 for the personal essay contest.

2. There’s a new edition of Mormon Artist. It includes a fascinating feature article by Iconia blogger (and artist and critic) Menachem Wecker titled “Are scholars and museums ignoring Mormon artists?” Mormon Artist editor Ben Crowder also announced that their fiction contest results and special issue should be available soon and that Mormon Artists is moving from a bi-monthly to quarterly schedule. As we’ve come to expect, this edition of Mormon Artist features great photography and illustration. In general, the Mormon publications have stepped up their game the past few years with their visual appeal — although some could still use better design and graphics.

3. The Mormon Review, a blog/online journal devoted to cultural criticism from a Mormon perspective, launched yesterday with a look at the two versions of Battlestar Galactica by James Bennett. I like that you can download PDF versions of the file. I think it’s weak that discussion on the articles is slotted over to time Times & Seasons. I’m not sure how The Mormon Review is going to carve out its own identity when most of the publicly viewed energy is directed towards T&S.  But it’s off to a rollicking start, and it’ll be interesting to see what future articles bring us.