The Association for Mormon Letters has been honoring excellence in the arts annually since 1977, making it the oldest Mormon arts awards in existence. You can see the full list of past winners here. The awards are announced each year in the following spring. Too often they have gone by without enough attention. This year I have been asked to head the awards board, and I hope that through more openness about the process and better communication we can help make the public better aware of the best of the Mormon literary world.
The categories differ each year. This year, we intend to give awards in the following categories:
- Creative non-fiction
- Comics/graphic fiction
- Criticism
- Drama
- Film
- Novel
- Poetry
- Short fiction
- YA Novel
- Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters
We may add other categories as we move ahead with the judging. I have recruited excellent judges for each of these categories. The identity of the judges is kept confidential. The awards honor works that were first published or performed in 2014. Awards were not given in 2013 to several categories, including criticism, drama, poetry, and short fiction. Therefore those categories will look at works first published in either 2013 or 2014. Any work by a Mormon (in the widest meaning of the word) creator is eligible for consideration.
The Whitney Awards have done a fantastic job of honoring and promoting quality work in a wide range of novels since 2007. While we do not honor as many novels as they do, we honor a wider range of literary categories, areas that otherwise could go unrecognized.
Normally the awards are announced and presented at the AML annual conference. There is a good chance, however, that the next AML conference will be held in 2016. We are currently looking for an appropriate venue to present the 2014 awards in the spring of 2015. I will announce the time and place as soon as it is determined.
We are going to try a new feature this year. Sometime before the awards are announced, probably in January or February, we will announce short lists, or finalists, in several of the categories, similar to the way that the Man Booker Prize and National Book Awards do. Hopefully this will help stoke interest in the upcoming awards.
The judges and I are working hard to try to be aware of all of the significant works of art being published. I will be contacting publishers over the next two months asking for review copies of books we would like to consider for awards. If publishers or artists would like to send copies of their works now for consideration, I would be happy to receive them and share them with the judges. Please send them to mormonlit AT gmail DOT com. We would prefer electronic versions, but if you want to send a hard copy, please write to the mormonlit email to request a mailing address.
I like the idea of short lists for the main categories. And the flexibility of adding categories as cultural production warrants. One cool thing about the various “extra” categories is that they mark unusual milestones in or interesting additions to the field.
I applaud the idea of greater transparency in the process. Not that I think there’s been anything at all nefarious about things in the past, but greater openness can help translate to more excitement and involvement.
I hereby volunteer this blog as a place where shortlists can be posted and discussed! (Not that you wouldn’t do it anyway…)
Thanks for leading this Andrew. The awards were one thing that many people mentioned as being an important way for AML to drive conversation about Mormon lit. While not a full measure of all that’s out there, I like the way awards not only recognize and point people to quality work, but they raise the level of awareness and appreciation for the whole field.
Looking forward to it.