Interview with alternate history author Laura Anderson

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Eric James Stone

Orson Scott Card has delved into the alternate history genre with his Alvin Maker series and Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. But the former is fantasy (there’s magic in it), and the latter is science fiction (there’s time travel in it); I don’t think he’s written what might be considered a pure alternate history novel: one that simply imagines what might have happened if a particular historical event had happened differently.

LDS author Eric Swedin’s novel When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a pure alternate history that won a Sidewise Award a couple of years ago. Other than that, I can’t think of any other LDS authors who have published pure alternate history novels — with the exception of my interviewee this month, Laura Anderson, whose novel The Boleyn King was released yesterday by Ballantine Books.  (If you know of any other alternate history novels by LDS authors, pure or not — by which I mean the purity of the alternate history, not the authors — please mention them in the comments.)

I had the pleasure of reading an early draft of The Boleyn King a few years ago, back when Laura and I were in an online writing group together, so I’m particularly pleased to see it finally get published.  Laura will be reading and signing this evening (May 15) at 7:00pm at the King’s English bookstore (a particularly well-named bookstore for this particular book) in Salt Lake City, so if you have a chance to swing by an pick up a copy, I recommend it.

Here are my questions for Laura and her responses: Continue reading →

Posted in SF&F corner | 5 Comments

Children’s Lit Corner

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Kathryn Poulter

I love a good guessing game. So for today’s blog entry, I have gathered together some of my favorite children’s books and written their first lines here. See if you can guess which book each quote comes from.

1. “‘Where’s Papa going with that axe?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”
2. “Harry was a white dog with black spots who liked everything, except…getting a bath.”
3. “Mr. and Mrs. Mallard were looking for a place to live.”
4. “Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.” Continue reading →

Posted in Children's Lit corner, General, YA corner | 2 Comments

This Week in Mormon Literature, May 11, 2013

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Andrew Hall

The LDStorymakers Conference is going on, with the Whitney Awards to be announced at the Gala dinner tonight. I have lots of Whitney book reviews and wrap-ups. Plan-B Theatre’s 2013-14 season will be dedicated to the work of Eric Samuelsen. The BYU Center for Animation won its 12th Student Emmy in 10 years.  Josh Hanagarne’s memoir The World’s Strongest Librarian  is released. Please send any information or corrections to mormonlit AT gmail DOT com.

News and blog posts

The LDStorymakers Conference is this weekend at The Provo Marriott Hotel. Anne Perry was the keynote speaker. The Whitney Awards will be announced at the Gala dinner on Saturday.

UPDATE: Here are the Whitney Award winners:

Lifetime Achievement: Lael Littke

Outstanding Achievement: Carol Lynch Williams

General; Camron Wright for “The Rent Collector”. First Whitney.

Historical:  Carla Kelly for “My Loving Vigil Keeping.” Second Whitney award in a row.

Mystery/Suspense: Traci Hunter Abramson for “Code Word.” First win after being nominated five times previously.

Romance: Julianne Donaldson for “Edenbrooke.”

Speculative fiction; Dan Wells for “The Hollow City.” Fourth Whitney award, he has won something every year since 2009.

General Young Adult: Lisa Mangum for “After Hello.” First Whitney.

Speculative YA: Brodi Ashton for “Everneath.” First Whitney.

Middle Grade: Jennifer A. Nielsen for “The False Prince.” First Whitney.

Best Novel By a New Author: Julianne Donaldson for “Edenbrooke.”

Best Youth Novel of the Year: Jennifer A. Nielson for “The False Prince”

Best Novel: Camron Wright for “The Rent Collector.”

Tweets about Anne Perry’s keynote address: “What we are here to do is learn to empathize with others.” Stories increase empathy as we live more lives than our own.            I think Anne Perry’s message at this keynote is to write w your heart-only she said more beautifully.        The best thing about Anne Perry’s speech was her conviction that writers do something beautiful and important.     “Dante’s Inferno is a raging good story. And darn good yarn.” -Anne Perry :)       We only live once, but if you read well you can taste a little bit of others’ lives. — Anne Perry on writing        Hearing Anne Perry read “The Good Samaritan” with her accent makes it seem even more profound. Continue reading →

Posted in This Week in Mormon Literature | 3 Comments

A Live Reading, the Lit Blitz, and our Master Class Application

Posted on May 9, 2013 by James Goldberg

Confession: I have mixed feelings about writing as a technology.

On the one hand, I’m amazed by how abstract marks on a page or screen can evoke the voice of a person thousands of miles–or years–away. Writing does a wonderful job at expanding the range of minds a given reader can interact with.

But it does so at a cost. I get to transmit my voice further through letters by sacrificing tone, gesture, body language, the energy of physical presence. And in listening from a distance, you lose the possibility of immediate response and the presence of the rest of the audience. That’s a high price to pay. We get distant connection at the risk of some immediate isolation.

What can we do to make up for the costs of writing? Last month, Jonathan Langford posted about communities of Mormon readers and writers and suggested that fans and scholars have a richer, more natural experience of story when they engage in further conversation with each other. Discussion groups, blogs, and live gatherings help counteract the necessary narrow experience of text. He also noted that many great written stories were products of live conversations and relationships between writers.

Today, I’m going to talk about three of my own current efforts to help make Mormon Lit a richer, more communal experience for writers and readers alike: the Mormon Lit Blitz, a reading with Steven Peck at Orem Library, and the upcoming (June 27-29) Mormon Writing Retreat/Master Class. Continue reading →

Posted in Announcements, Storytelling and Community | 6 Comments

Whitney Finalists 2012: Final Thoughts

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Jessie Christensen

Three months ago I wrote a post with some of my initial thoughts on the 2012 Whitney Award finalists. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to read 25 books in three months and I wondered whether or not reading them all at once was a good idea. I have the same dilemma every year: read fiction by LDS authors all year in the hopes of catching at least some potential Whitney finalists (and to have the chance to nominate some books as well), or focus on a mix of LDS-related fiction, national-market fiction, and nonfiction like I usually do. Unfortunately there are just too many books in the world to ever be able to read everything I would like to, but reading choices and priorities are a topic for a different post. This year I read most of the finalists for the adult categories (I skipped both youth categories this year) within the short space of a few months, and while I think that this runs the risk of problems like burnout or a lack of perspective from reading so many similar books, I think I will stick to this strategy again next year. Well, actually next year’s plans for Whitney reading are still nebulous since I am starting a graduate degree in the fall. This may be my last Whitney-related post for a while. Enough blathering—on with the discussion! Continue reading →

Posted in Community Voices, Mormon LitCrit | Tagged | 11 Comments

This Week in Mormon Literature, April 29, 2013

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Andrew Hall

Sorry to post right after Jonathan, but I have been dragging this around unfinished for over a week, it is time to get this giant hunk of info dumped so I can go to bed. The Whitney Awards ballots are due today. Scott Hatch won the 2013 Marilyn Brown Unpublished Novel Competition, from his own university. We have new AML presidents, and lots of new books. The upcoming Whitney Awards means that there is a flood of reviews of the 2012 finalists.

News and Blog posts

Whitney Awards ballots are due on Monday, April 29th.

Scott Hatch, a lecturer in English at Utah Valley University, was recently named winner of the 2013 Marilyn Brown Unpublished Novel Competition for his work, “A Boy Scout’s Field Guide to the Red-shifting Universe.” Continue reading →

Posted in This Week in Mormon Literature | 5 Comments

A Community of (Mormon) Readers

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Jonathan Langford

The best conversations are the ones where you get a chance both to share your own views and to rethink them in response to what other people say. That’s the kind of experience I had with my recent AML blog post about LTUE, the ongoing science fiction and fantasy symposium formerly held at BYU, and its relationship to the Mormon sf&f community.

This post is me continuing the cycle by sharing some of those new thoughts, which aren’t so specific to sf&f. In fact, I think they have a lot to do with the community of Mormon letters in general, and AML in particular. Let’s see what you think.

Continue reading →

Posted in Community Voices, SF&F corner | Tagged , | 11 Comments

in verse # 28 : the pun is meatier than the surd

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Dennis Clark

Sitting at home alone in bed when I was 13, and unable to go out because I was undergoing the aftermath of rheumatic fever, I entertained myself with old copies of Reader’s Digest.  One of the things I digested thoroughly in the humor columns was puns.  I believe it was in one of those columns[i] that I read an entry from a proud punster who told of a woman who had named her new ranch, which was operated by her sons in her behalf , “Focus.”  Asked why, she replied “It’s where the sons raise meat.”  The author was proud of the fact that this was the only triple pun he knew of.  Now it wasn’t that kind of punning that fed this reader’s disgust with the magazine — it was the right-wing politics and red-baiting, which I was old enough to recognize but too young to understand.  So now I only read the magazine to keep my contempt fresh.  Joseph McCarthy had just recently died, and I had heard him memorialized in an editorial on KSL radio by comparison with the Roman senator Cato, who argued that, for the good of Rome, “Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” — (Moreover, I advise that Carthage must be destroyed.)[ii]  It was the era of the Birch John Society (promoting outhouses) and Walt Kelly’s Jack Acid Society black book, the first piece of political satire I ever bought.[iii]

But when John Pollack talks about puns, he invokes a bigger tent.  Talking about Jewish punning Continue reading →

Posted in In Verse, Mormon LitCrit | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Nephi Anderson at the Annual SASS Conference

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Scott Hales

Next week, the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies will be holding its annual conference in San Francisco. For this year’s conference, a few of us have put together a panel on Nephi Anderson that focuses on his Scandinavian roots and importance as one of the pioneers of Mormon fiction. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first academic conference panel to focus specifically on Anderson and his work.

The panel will be comprised of three Anderson enthusiasts: Sarah Reed, from the University of Wisconsin; Eric W. Jepson, from Peculiar Pages Press; and me. Our session will be held at the San Francisco Hilton/Financial District Hotel at 1:30 pm on Saturday May 4th. If you are in the area, we invite you to join us as we present our papers and share on thoughts.

I’ve included our panel and presentation proposals below. They should give you a general idea about what we will be discussing. For those of you who would like to attend, but are unable to do so, feel free to ask questions about Anderson or our proposals in the comments section.  We’d be happy to answer them for you.

Continue reading →

Posted in Mormon LitCrit | Tagged , | 16 Comments

In Tents #28 Ethics and Aesthetics Part 6, Final Thoughts

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Harlow Clark

Much of Shostakovich’s music was banned for the sin of formalism–whatever that means–so it wasn’t heard until after Stalin’s death in 1953.
–Peggy Woodruff, introducing Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture” on KBYU FM March 14, 2013

The idea that ethics and aesthetics are the same thing is an elegant hypothesis, one that explains a lot, such as why discussions about aesthetics so easily turn into disagreements and heated arugments. We’re not talking about whether a formalist or structuralist or impressionist or expressionist approach is most fitting to the story we’re telling, we’re talking about the spiritual aspects of the form and of the story, or the spiritual implications.

A story is not simply a story, it’s a moral act to be judged by formal and informal criteria as sinful or virtuous, criteria we attach to our definitions of virtue and sin.

And that’s the problem I see with equating ethics and aesthetics. I’ve been listening to Leviticus and Numbers this week. The ethical instructions are precise–don’t gather sticks on the sabbath, don’t lie with animals, don’t hanker for the melons and cucumbers of Egypt. The subtext that performing external ordinances can align our inward natures with God was brought to the surface 30-plus generations later, the implication explicated, in a terrifying sermon delivered on a mountain side, in which the koheleth delivering the sermon insisted that ethical action is a matter of internal intent rather than external performance. A devotional act like bringing a sacrifice to the temple is meaningless if my brother or sister has aught against me. Leave the gift at the altar and make that aught into a naught, unknotting the emotions and actions that separate me from those I ought to love.
Continue reading →

Posted in Literary Views of Scripture | Tagged | 3 Comments