Association for Mormon Letters Annual Conference 11 and 12 April, 2014
Venue: Utah Valley University Library
Friday evening: (note this will be held in lecture theater LA101)
6pm Welcome and opening panel: New Mormon Theater (Eric Samuelson, Jerry Argetsinger, Scott Bronson) Moderator: Margaret Young
7pm. Reader’s Theater: “A Second Birth” Ariel Mitchell
Follow-up discussion of the play.
Saturday 12 April:
9.00am. Registration (UVU Library Lecture Theater – ground floor)
9.15. Welcome
| 9.30. (Track 1) Joseph and Kay Darowski | (Track 2) Panel Discussion: |
| The Joseph Smith Papers. What Are they Good For? | Teaching Mormon Literature |
| Christopher C Smith | Margaret Young, Scott Hales, Shelah Miner, Boyd Petersen |
| Adoption of Ecstatic Native American Practices in Early Mormon Ohio | Moderator: John Bennion |
| 10.30 (Track 1) ) Lisa Olsen Tait | (Track 2) Panel Discussion |
| Three Forgotten Women Writers of the Home Literature Movement | Promoting New Mormon Fiction |
| Boyd Petersen | Stephen Carter, James Goldberg, Shelah Miner |
| Historical Mormon Interpretations of Eve | |
| 11.30am Keynote Address: Lecture Theater | Dr Michael Hicks (BYU) |
| “Inventing ‘Mormon Music’” | |
| 12.30 Award Luncheon (box lunch $12.00) | Lakeview Room in Library |
| 2pm. Lecture Theater | Performance of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” composed by Darrell Brown, BYU Idaho With text based on the short story of the same name by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this is song cycle/musical drama for solo tenor voice and accompanied by a consort of piccolo/flute/bass flute, eb clarinet/bb clarinet/eb contralto clarinet, cello, and percussion (marimba, vibraphone, chimes, congas, and bass drum). |
| 2.30pm. (Track 1) Scott Hales | (Track 2) Tyler Chadwick |
| New Mormon Fiction | “Alex’s Tongue: Making, the Makar, and Mormonism” |
| 3.30pm (Track 1) Jerry Argetsinger | (Track 2) Harlow Clark |
| Gay Mormon Fiction | Scattered into Jagged Pieces: Troubled Mormon Marriage Memoirs of Phyllis Barber, Carol Lynn Pearson, and Florence Child Brown |
| 4.30pm Combined: Lecture Theater | James Goldberg: “Why the Church Is Boring But Our Covenants Are Not” |
| Stephen Carter: “The History of Book of Mormon Comics” | |
| 5.30pm End of the Conference |
I admit to being highly jealous of those of you who will be able to attend…
Note the updates to titles of James Golberg’s and Stephen Carter’s talks.
Jonathan: Could you update the title of my presentation as well? Here it is: “Alex’s Tongue: Making, the Makar, and Mormonism.” Thanks much!
Done!
.
This is more important than the actual reason I’m coming to Utah this month…..
In lieu of any official announcements from the organization, here is what I can figure out what has happened, from tweets from participants Scott Hales (@TheLowTechWorld), Tyler Chadwick (@KingTawhiao) and Kjerste Christensen (@byu_librarian).
Awards:
Lifetime Achievement: Dean Hughes
Smith-Pettit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters: Charlotte England
Novel: Sarah Eden for Longing for Home: Hope Springs
Theater: Ariel Mitchell for A Second Birth
(Both of the following are YA novels, so I am not sure exactly what the award titles are)
Brandon Sanderson for The Rithmatist
Cindy Hogan for Grave Diggers
Memoir: Melissa Dalton-Bradford for Global Mom
Film: Garrett Batty for The Saratov Approach
Special Award: Scott Hales for the comic The Garden of Enid
The new president is Joe Plicka, replacing Glenn Gordon (does that begin immediately?). The conference will be held in Hawaii next year. Plicka is an Associate Professor in the English Department at BYU Hawaii. His faculty Bio says (https://english.byuh.edu/?q=fulltimefaculty) “Joe Plicka completed a double B.A. in English and Latin American Studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah (2002), where he also received a M.A. in English (2006). He earned his doctorate in English Language and Literature at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio (2011) and continued to teach literature and creative writing there for another a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor. His dissertation was a collection of short fiction (Stories for the Mongrel Heart) and an essay analyzing the inner workings of storytelling and arguing for the unique and powerful place that fictional discourse holds in any culture. While at Ohio University, Joe also spent two years as the editor of Quarter After Eight, a national literary journal, and as an organizer of Ohio University’s long-running Spring Literary Festival. He has taught introductory literature and composition classes, beginning and advanced creative writing workshops, and courses on the form and theory of fiction. He has published short stories, poems, and is at work on a couple of novels. In his other lives, he worked as a journalist, P.E. teacher, care provider at a group home, maintenance man in the dorms at UC Davis, brick cutter, pipe painter, and paperboy. Joe married Emily Austin in 2001. Emily also teaches in the BYU Hawaii English Department as a Special Instructor. They have two children.”
Darrell Spencer was his PhD Committee Chair at Ohio University. You can read his dissertation at: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/ohiou1304542382/inline
Michael Andrew Ellis blogs on the panels he attended at:
http://www.michaelandrewellis.com/2014/04/14/report-from-the-2014-association-for-mormon-letters-conference-part-one/
I hope those involved will fill in the blanks of what I am missing.