We are pleased to announce the 2019 Association for Mormon Letters Awards finalists in novel and short fiction. The final awards will be announced and presented on May 2 at the AML Conference, held in Salt Lake City. We will be announcing the other category finalists over the coming week, including Comics, Creative Non-Fiction, Criticism, Drama, Film, Middle Grade Novel, Picture Book, Poetry, Religious Non-Fiction, and Young Adult Novel, as well as two lifetime awards. The finalists and winners are chosen by juries of authors, academics, and critics. The announcements include book blurbs and author biographies, adapted from the author and publisher websites.
Novel
D. J. Butler and Aaron Ritchey. The Cunning Man. Baen.
It’s the depths of the Depression, and a mining town in Utah is shut down. Something has awakened underground, and now a monster roams the tunnels. While contentious owners squabble, poor worker families go hungry. Along comes Hiram Woolley. Hiram is a man with mystical abilities derived from the commonsense application of Scots-Irish folk wisdom and German braucher magic. He possesses an arcane Bloodstone that allows him to see a lie the moment it is spoken. Behind the played-out farms and failed businesses are demons, curses, sorcerers, and unatoned wrongs. Bags of groceries and carpentry won’t be enough this time.The job will take a man who has known sorrow. A man who has known war. A man of wisdom. A man of magic.
D.J. (“Dave”) Butler grew up in swamps, deserts, and mountains. After messing around for years with the practice of law, he finally got serious and turned to his lifelong passion of storytelling. He now writes adventure stories for readers of all ages, plays guitar, and spends as much time as he can with his family. He is the author of City of the Saints, The Kidnap Plot (2016 AML Middle Grade finalist) and Witchy Winter (winner of the 2018 AML Novel Award).
Aaron Michael Ritchey is the author of twenty-one novels and numerous pieces of short fiction. He was born on a cold and snowy September day in Denver, Colorado, and while he’s lived and travelled all over the world, he’s a child of the American West.
Lisa Van Orman Hadley. Irreversible Things. Howling Bird Press.
Brimming with wit and heart, Irreversible Things follows three decades in the life of author-qua-narrator Lisa and her charismatic Mormon family, from childhood to puberty to adulthood. From a young girl grappling with early friendships, first crushes, and a beloved neighbor’s shocking murder, to a young woman beginning her own family, dealing with infertility, and caring for a father with Alzheimer’s, this work expands our understanding of the novel form, weaving together memoir, fiction, and the fiction of remembering.
Lisa Van Orman Hadley graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. She received the Larry Levis post-graduate fellowship, a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant, and a Millay Colony fellowship to work on Irreversible Things. Her stories have most recently appeared in Epoch, New England Review, and The Collagist. Lisa lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Annette Haws, Maggie’s Place. Covenant Communications.
When Mary Margaret Sullivan turned sixty-seven-years old, she changed her name, boxed up her previous life, moved into a one bedroom apartment on the Seventh Floor of the Eagle Gate Apartments, and hid her memories in a chicken wire storage unit in the basement. Secrets, of course, have an inconvenient way of surfacing when people least expect them to reappear. Three weeks before Christmas, an elegant man in the penthouse and a homeless girl invade Maggie’s carefully circumscribed life. In different ways each is connected to Maggie’s difficult past. The young girl is easy to love, but Maggie’s feelings for the gentleman in the penthouse twist as she struggles to give what he desperately needs, forgiveness.
Annette Haws studied American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa and the University of Utah. After spending fourteen years teaching in public schools she retired to pursue writing fiction. Three of her short stories have appeared in Dialogue, one of which “The Gift of Tongues”, was a finalist for the AML Short Fiction Award. Her first novel about the travails of a schoolteacher, Waiting for the Light to Change, won Best of State, a Whitney Award for Best General Fiction, and the League of Utah Writers award for best published fiction
Dean Hughes. Muddy: Where Faith and Polygamy Collide. Deseret Book.
When Brigham Young summons young Morgan Davis to his office and calls him to join other missionaries in settling the Muddy River Valley (what is now Nevada), Morgan can’t imagine what lies in store. He has just two weeks to find a wife and gather enough belongings to help start a settlement. As Morgan and his new bride, Angeline, travel the long trail south in a covered wagon, they fall in love and connect with the other Saints. But the desert location on the Muddy River soon becomes a physical and emotional test for all of them. Together they face difficult requests from Church leaders, multiple failed attempts to settle, deaths of loved ones, and then perhaps the ultimate challenge—polygamy. What do stalwart members do when faced with conflicting feelings between what their hearts tell them and the hard instructions from Salt Lake City? Morgan and Angeline are about to find out. The sequel, River, set in Orderville in the 1860s-70s, will be released this month.
Dean Hughes is a best-selling writer who published his 100th book in 2014. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Weber State College in Utah and master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Washington. He has attended post-doctoral seminars at Stanford and Yale Universities and taught English at Central Missouri State University and Brigham Young University. His previous AML awards in include 1994 Young Adult Novel for The Trophy, 1998 Novel Award for Far from Home, the 2005 Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters for his Children of the Promise series, and an 2013 Outstanding Achievement Award for his writing career.
Ann Weisgarber. The Glovemaker. Skyhorse Publishing.
In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is getting worried. Deborah lives in Junction, a tiny isolated town on the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. When a desperate stranger who is pursued by a Federal Marshal shows up on her doorstep seeking refuge, it sets in motion a chain of events that will turn her life upside down. Although Deborah is not devout and doesn’t subscribe to polygamy, she is distrustful of non-Mormons. But all is not what it seems, and when the Marshal is critically injured, Deborah and her husband’s best friend, Nels Anderson, are faced with life and death decisions that question their faith, humanity, and both of their futures.
Ann Weisgarber earned a Master of Arts in Sociology from the University of Houston. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2014 and lives in Galveston, Texas. She is the author of The Promise and The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. She won the Stephen Turner Award for First Fiction and the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction, and was a finalist for Scotland’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Orange Award for New Writers in the United Kingdom. The Glovemaker has been published in German and Italian.
Short Fiction
Alison Maeser Brimley. “You Can Give Him a Kiss”. Sunstone, #188.
Alison Maeser Brimley is the winner of the 2017 and 2018 AML Short Fiction Awards and the 2017 Mountain West Writers Contest. She lives in Utah with her husband and daughter. This story won first place in the 2017 Sunstone Fiction Contest. A recording of the story can be found in the link.
Danny Nelson. “My Father’s Liahona”. In Press Forward Saints: A Mormon Steampunk Anthology.
Danny Nelson’s short stories, poetry, and columns have appeared in publications such as Rio Grande Review, The Collegiate Post, and Inscape. His works have appeared in The Fob Bible, Monsters and Mormons, and The Broken Arms series. He lives in Salt Lake City with his husband and two intelligence-challenged dogs.
Levi Peterson. “Bode and Iris”. Dialogue, Summer 2019.
Levi S. Peterson is a retired professor of English presently living in Washington state. He is the author of many essays and stories on Mormon themes. He is the author of two collections of stories, The Canons of Grace and Night Soil; two novels, The Backslider and Aspen Marooney; a biography, Juanita Brooks: The Life Story of a Courageous Historian of the Mountain Meadows Massacre; and an autobiography, A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning. He is a six-time AML Award winner, as well as being given an AML Honorary Lifetime Membership and the 2009 Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters. A recording of “Bode and Iris” for the Dialogue Podcast can be heard here.
Karen Rosenbaum. “Next of Kin”. Irreantum, Winter 2018.
Karen Rosenbaum studied literature at the University of Utah and Stanford University. She was a professor of English at Ohlone Community College in 1967-2001. Her work has frequently been published in Dialogue, Exponent II, Irreantum, and Sunstone. In 2014 she was awarded an AML Lifetime Achievement Award, and her book Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives won the 2015 AML Short Fiction Collection Award.