The Association for Mormon Letters presents The Smith-Petit Award for 2015 to Margaret Blair Young for her Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters. The following citation was written by a group of Margaret’s colleagues.
The young Margaret Blair—Maggie to her friends—could never have imagined the contribution Margaret Blair Young would make to Mormon Literature. Not that she lacked imagination—her earliest stories show she had it—but the scope of her contribution would have been beyond that Maggie’s imagination. From the time she published those first stories, she could not have projected herself into the world she is now stepping into—of feature film production in Africa.
Not that she has lacked ambition either. Since her first stories in the New Era and an early issue of Exponent II, she has produced a stream of stories, poems, essays, novels, plays, criticism, even history. The list of her publications and awards stretches long enough that a page full of sentences might barely hold it all, with no room left for praise. More than thirty of her short stories have appeared in venues from Sunstone and Dialogue to Nimrod and The Southern Review, and in her collections Elegies and Love Songs (University of Idaho Press, 1992) and Love Chains (Signature, 1997). Her novels so far are House Without Walls (Deseret, 1991), Salvador (Aspen, 1992), and Heresies of Nature 
(Signature, 2003), and, written in collaboration with Darius Aidan Gray, the trilogy Standing on the Promises (Deseret, 2000–2003; revised, Zarahemla, 2012–13), consisting of One More River to Cross, Bound for
Canaan, and The Last Mile of the Way. Her noteworthy personal, critical, and historical essays have appeared in the AML Annual and in Dialogue and Sunstone. Her work has gathered awards in student contests at BYU and from the Utah Arts Council and the Association for Mormon Letters, as well as an honorable mention for the Katherine Anne Porter prize, and a Pushcart Prize listing.
Besides notable acting performances, Margaret has written and guided into production her own plays I Am Jane and Dear Stone, and for public television, again in collaboration with Darius Aidan Gray, the documentary films Jane Manning James: Your Sister in the Gospel and Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons. She currently has under development, to be filmed in the Congo with Sterling Van Wagenen as director, Heart of Africa.
With an infectious passion, Margaret has waded, or sometimes dived headfirst, into the treacherous waters of troubling matters in Mormon history and experience: race and racism; incurable illness that priesthood blessings do not alleviate; infirmities of old age; abusive marriage and bitter divorce; infidelity. She might say, with Joseph Smith, “deep water is what I am wont to swim in” [D&C 127.2]. Her careful and thorough research, with Darius Gray, for the Standing on the Promises trilogy and the play I Am Jane led her into stories that most in her audience had never known, and ultimately to historically documentable 
and thus more true versions of stories—like those of Elijah Abel and Jane Manning James—that had been smoothed up for general consumption. In bringing out of the shadows these stories of black Mormons, sometimes against official opposition, she displayed a fierce determination to open Mormon literature to a whole other world of experience, a history the rest of us should never have forgotten, and should have pursued since at least 9 June 1978. She rather literally ushered out an old millenium and ushered in a new with Standing on the promises, I am Jane, and her historical essay “‘Is There No Blessing for Me?’: The Relentless Jane Manning James.”
Perhaps her gifts for languages and for acting, together with what Keats called “negative capability,” underlie her remarkable capacity to imagine herself—and thus invite us to imagine ourselves—“inside the skin, body, heart, and mind of any other person” which, as Eudora Welty said, “is the primary feat, but also the absolute necessity” in making fiction; drama and film too, we may add, and joining others in a community of faith. All of Margaret Young’s work, from her performance as Helmuth Huebener’s mother in Thomas Rogers’ play Huebener, to the memorable narrator of her novel Salvador, to Jane Manning James, has ventured across borders of geography, language, culture, gender, status, belief, guided in the light of, and by a search for (to borrow her own words), Grace and Truth in Mormon Art.
To her future, as much as to her past accomplishments, as searcher and researcher, actor, teacher and mentor, as AML member and president, as novelist, dramatist, and producer, the Association for Mormon Letters is honored to present Margaret Blair Young the Smith-Pettit Award for an outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.
Selected Bibliography
Education:
1979, B.A. Brigham Young University, Emphasis: Theater and Cinematic Arts
1988, M.A. Brigham Young University, English, Emphasis: Creative Writing
Novels
House Without Walls. Deseret Book, 1991.
Salvador. Aspen, 1992. Utah Arts Council Novel First Prize
Standing on the Promises series, co-written with Darius Gray. Deseret Book. The entire series won the 2003 AML Historical Fiction award. The series was revised and expanded in 2012-2013, Zarahemla Press.
One More River to Cross. 2000. Utah Arts Council Honorable mention, AML Novel Award.
Bound for Canaan. 2002.
The Last Mile of the Way. 2003.
Heresies of Nature. Signature, 2002. Novelization of her play Dear Stone.
Short stories and short story collections
“Mrs. Brant.” New Era, June 1979.
(Lots of individual stories, 1985-1997, which were published in her two collections.)
Elegies and Love Songs. University of Idaho Press, 1992. AML Short Story Award.
Love Chains. Signature, 1997.
“Outsiders”, originally published in Dialogue, 1991, was anthologized in Bright Angels and Familiars, Eugene England, ed. Signature, 1992.
“Zoo Sounds”, originally published in Sunstone, 1996, was anthologized in Dispensations: Latter-Day Fiction. Zarahemla Books, 2010. MBY also wrote an introduction to that anthology.
“Sanctuaries”. Dialogue 36:2, Summer 2003.
Poetry
“In The Years Before She Went Insane”. Sunstone, March 1985.
Theater
Dear Stone. BYU, 1997. 1st Place in the BYU Studies Playwriting Competition
I am Jane. 2000 AML Drama award. Anthologized in Saints on Stage: An Anthology of Mormon Drama. Mahonri Stewart, ed. Zarahemla Books, 2013.
Film
Jane Manning James: Your Sister in the Gospel. Screenplay. Produced and directed by Scott Freebairn. The 20-minute documentary has been shown on public television.
Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons. 2008. Darius Gray and Margaret Young directed, wrote, and produced the documentary. Appeared on PBS and the Documentary Channel.
The Wisdom of our Years. Project director. Documentary about African-Americans in Utah, created b the Utah chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.
Heart of Africa. Writer, producer. Directed by Sterling Van Wagenen. Currently under development.
Personal Essay
“Dirge for Thomas Kuku”. Inscape, Fall 1986
“Doing Huebener”. Dialogue, Winter 1988
“Bare Legs, Bare Soul”. Exponent II, Summer 1998
“Essay for June 9, 1998”. Dialogue, Spring 1999
“’Is There No Blessing for Me?’ : The Relentless Jane Manning James”. Association for Mormon Letters Annual, 2001.
Blogs
Times and Seasons, 2006-2007 http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/author/margaret-young/
By Common Consent, 2007-2013 http://bycommonconsent.com/author/bccmby/
Patheos: The Welcome Table 2012-2015 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/welcometable/
Awards
AML Award 4 times (Short Story, Novel, Historical Fiction, Drama)
Utah Arts Council 1st Place 4 times (Short Story Collection, Short Story, Novel (twice))
AML Service
President, 2010-2013
Teaching
Creative Writing Instructor at BYU
For more detailed information, see the Margaret Blair Young Mormon Literature Database entry.
It’s really great to read this, only knowing Margaret from a distance. Thanks Andrew.
Congratulations to our precious “MEG!” She’s the first of our eight amazing teachers.
She has a marvelous capacity to see things as they really are and to love and appreciate
life in its many aspects of light and darkness, good and evil, success and failure, faith and doubt.
She loves life and light and she understands their opposites. She is always kind.