The Mormon Lit Blitz: Week One

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Scott Hales

Today marks one week since the start of the Mormon Lit Blitz. Already we’ve featured great works by Marilyn Nielson, Wm Morris, Jeanna Mason Stay, Emily Harris Adams, Sandra Tayler, Merrijane Rice, and Kathyrn Lynard Soper. Over the next week we will be featuring the six remaining finalists, beginning tomorrow with Emily Debenham’s short story, “The Shoe App.” If you are a fan of Mormon literature, and haven’t already jumped on the Mormon Lit Blitz bandwagon, please jump now. We have plenty of seats available, and no one is going to judge you for following the crowd.

The purpose of my post today is to reflect a little on this past week and get a discussion going about some of the contest’s more interesting developments. Continue reading →

Posted in Mormon LitCrit, Storytelling and Community | 30 Comments

The Language of Our Fathers (or You Should See What I Hear)

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Scott Parkin

“And behold, it is wisdom in God that we should obtain these records, that we may preserve unto our children the language of our fathers…” (1 Nephi 3:19)

My kindergartner is learning to read, and his big sister has been infinitely patient in helping him sound out words from the Pokemon adventure book he’s currently working through. He’s in that early stage where he takes it one letter at a time, though he’s now working at stringing several letters together.

So it was an interesting surprise as I heard him carefully sound out “bee-atch” while reading about Squirtle’s latest adventure. My daughter bit her lip, then explained that when two vowels are together, you usually only say the first one’s name, so the word is actually “beach.”

The words we see and the words we say sometimes seem only tangentially connected. Most of the time it’s irrelevant—I remember one young church speaker who kept saying how “poyg-nant” (hard g) a particular Book of Mormon story was. Like my son’s pronunciation of “bee-atch” it was a simple case of failing to connect the written symbol to a more commonly heard word combined with generic unfamiliarity with the written form.
Continue reading →

Posted in Community Voices, Funny Stuff, General, Thoughts on Language | 3 Comments

LTUE Roundup

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Eric James Stone

Last weekend, science fiction and fantasy writers and fans from Utah and beyond gathered for Life, the Universe & Everything (LTUE): The Marion K. “Doc” Smith Symposium on Science Fiction & Fantasy.  After being held at BYU for 29 years, the venue changed this year to Utah Valley University.

Although there were several reasons for the venue change, the one I find very disappointing is the lack of support from BYU faculty. You’d think that the English department might give at least token support to a symposium named after one of its late members, but from what I understand (and it’s all hearsay, so if anyone knows differently, please let me know) the BYU English department doesn’t particularly care for the speculative fiction genres and therefore stopped sponsoring both LTUE and the Leading Edge magazine.  (I used to be very proud of BYU for recognizing the worth of speculative fiction, but apparently that was the result of individual faculty members who are now retired or deceased.) Continue reading →

Posted in SF&F corner | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Announcement: Mormon Lit Blitz Schedule

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Jonathan Langford

Moderator Note: Apologies for “stepping” on Kathryn’s day, but we wanted to make sure this announcement got out in a timely fashion. Lots going on in Mormon letters right now!

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“We must read, and think, and feel, and pray, and then bring forth our thoughts, and polish and preserve them. This will make literature.”—Orson F. Whitney

Fifty years ago, most schools taught that making literature was a matter of combining great language and universal human values. Since then, millions of readers have decided that context also counts: that it’s nice to get our grand human dilemmas through the lens of very specific cultures with their unique values, traditions, tensions.

From February 15th to February 29th, Mormon Artist magazine will begin hosting the Mormon Lit Blitz, an online literary contest organized by James Goldberg and Scott Hales. We believe that Mormon experience is rich enough to inspire engaging poems, stories, and essays—and are ready to offer thirteen pieces as proof.

Continue reading →

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Children’s Lit Corner

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Kathryn Poulter

Happy Valentine’s Day! In my mother’s family, this day was set apart as a day of family gift giving. Grandpa would buy boxes of chocolates for his three girls and Grandmother. Later he included his grandchildren in the chocolate gifts. That tradition continued throughout the rest of Grandpa’s long, long life, until he died in 2008 at the age of 99. I remember the Valentine’s Days I spent on my mission, and how thrilled I was to open the mailbox in Michigan and find a little package from Grandpa, all the way from Salt Lake City!

Yes, Valentine’s Day was a family holiday for us. The elementary school envelopes containing a couple of candy hearts were not REAL valentines, to my mind. A real valentine was a gift from my mother or father, or even one of my siblings. This brings me to the topic I’ve been thinking about for this blog post: sibling relations. Continue reading →

Posted in Children's Lit corner, Storytelling and Community, YA corner | 4 Comments

Remembering Paul Swenson

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Stephen Carter

From Medicare’s point of view, Paul Swenson’s 100-day recovery from the life-threatening infection that laid him low in August was probably money ill spent since he passed away only a few months after his release from care. But for me, it was a great time. I knew where Paul was living and I knew that he wasn’t going anywhere. So I visited him at least once a week during his stay at the Highland Care Center.

During one of my first visits, when Paul was still very tired and sick, I started talking about aging. I’ve done some fun things during my life, but now being at the ripe old age of 36, I wondered aloud if my interesting days were behind me.

“Actually, the most interesting things in my life happened after I turned forty,” Paul said.

I pressed him for some examples. Continue reading →

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This Week in Mormon Literature, Feb. 10, 2012

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Andrew Hall

The Whitey Awards finalists were named, the LDS Film Festival was held, LTUE is going on now, several plays are ongoing, three new Jane Austen-based novels, and the passing of Paul Swenson. All these Mormon lit news, books, and reviews, it’s killing me. Look how long this is! If you must, please send any suggestions or announcements to mormonlit AT gmail DOT com.

News and blog posts

Journalist, editor, and poet Paul Swenson passed away on February 2, 2012, at the age of 76. He was a journalist at the Deseret News, editor of Utah Holiday magazine in the 1970s and 1980s, and wrote for The Event, the Salt Lake Observer, and the Salt Lake Tribune. He wrote poetry, and Signature Books published his 2003 poetry collection Iced at the Ward, Burned at the Stake. He was the younger brother of May Swenson, one of the leading American poets of the 20th century. Continue reading →

Posted in This Week in Mormon Literature | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Going Viral with Mormon Lit

Posted on February 10, 2012 by James Goldberg

I’ve just had a rather strange experience.

On Monday night, I wrote up a blog post in response to a New York Times op ed piece that was pretty negative about Mormonism. The NYT piece was really nothing new–the central point seemed to be that Mormons are naive, kooky creatures who just crawled out of some time capsule. Which I’m sure you’ve heard before. Maybe it was seeing it in the NYT that motivated me to respond. Maybe it was just that my mom had to go before I finished talking with her on the phone about it.

But whatever the reason, I wrote a response, and posted it, and put up a link on Facebook.

According to Google Analytics, over 17,000 people have read my piece since then.

Continue reading →

Posted in Electronic Age, Storytelling and Community | Tagged , | 21 Comments

Publishers Corner: Behind the Scenes at Zarahemla

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Chris Bigelow

First of all, I’d like to thank all the publishing folk who’ve taken time to write guest posts for this “Publishers Corner” category over the last year or more. We’ve had a good range, from Deseret and Covenant to some of the newest micropresses in the Mormon field.

Without someone else lined up for this month, I thought I’d type up a few notes and thoughts about my own publishing concern, Zarahemla Books (I’d like to see other publishers contribute reports annually as well). About this time a year ago, I thought Zarahemla was fading into the sunset. I wasn’t going to shut it down—there’s really nothing to shut down, in terms of overhead—but I wasn’t going to push it. Continue reading →

Posted in Publishers Corner | 18 Comments

Is There Deep Play in Heaven? Or Rest Well, Brother Swenson, Rest Well

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Guest

Guest post by Tyler Chadwick. Cross-posted from A Motley Vision and from Tyler’s website.

On the afternoon of the first
resurrection, I want to sit on my sister May’s bench and read
her new poems. So, maybe, if you’re still around when I go under,
I wonder—could you burn me, turn me into ash, and slip me in
[the family plot] somewhere?

–Paul Swenson, “Family Plot”

I received news last Friday morning (2/3) from Paul Swenson’s good friend and fellow poet Alex Caldiero that Paul passed away around noon last Thursday. I didn’t know Paul personally—we spoke on the phone once and interacted a bit via email while I was compiling Fire in the Pasture—but I do know for certain that his passing, which came after a long bout of unsettled health, leaves a void in the world of Mormon poetry, one that may continually be filled with the language he left behind and with any language and personal and cultural change that language inspires.

Continue reading →

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