Comings and goings in LDS-related literature, film, and art, Fall/Winter 2024
2024 started out fairly slowly in terms of LDS-related arts, but things have picked up lately, with lots of interesting new literary works, a major national film with Mormon characters and belief at its center, a new issue of Irreantum and and a new round of the Mormon Lit Blitz, and a landmark LDS art critical reader.
Short fiction and a novel
Annaliese Lemmon. “Music of the Sprit“. Wayfare, December. A high school girl with a musical spiritual gift struggles with friendship.
William Morris. “Strait is the Way”. Dialogue, Fall 2024 (57:3). Spiritual gifts, time travel, and straight-edge punk.
Dialogue Out Loud podcast episode: William Morris talks breaking writing rules and crafting his story “Strait is the Way”with fiction editors Joe Plicka & Ryan Shoemaker.
Steven L. Peck. “The Following Darkness”. Wayfare, November. A young Joseph Fielding Smith teaches Nephi Anderson how to drive a car, in a spooky Pleasant Grove story.
Mary Clyde. Journeys from a Desert Road. Signature, October. “When a brilliant light erupts in the desert night, Jack recognizes it as the awesome and destructive power of an atomic bomb. But in another world, far removed from Jack’s mind, his family sits by his side after a traumatic car accident has rendered him comatose. Jack, relying on fantasies he and his sister fabricated as teenagers, struggles to lead the people he loves out of radiation-contaminated Phoenix as his family keeps vigil in his hospital room. Whether fleeing nuclear disaster or pacing by a sickbed, these flawed and stressed individuals behave with fierce loyalty and an equally fierce love that forces an ascension of hope and survival.”
Mary Clyde on the Signature podcast: Author Mary Clyde talks with marketing specialist Beth Brumer Reeve about how Journeys from a Desert Road came to life, how her kids always talking about a zombie apocalypse informed her story, and why she doesn’t believe in writing at 5:00 a.m. Mary Clyde writes about her novel for AML here.
Literary Journals and contests
Irreantum’s latest issue, Start!, is full of great Mormon short stories, poems, songs, essays, and art (December). Authors: Nancy Heiss, Micah Cozzens, Annaliese Lemmon, Mario Montani (Spanish story, translated by Gabriel González), Kelly McDonald, Dennis Read, Emily Brown, Pierina Velásquez (Spanish story, translated by Kevin Klein), Elizabeth Smith, Lexie R. Kunz, Donald Ford, D. A. Cooper, Norman Shurtliff.
Irreantum editor Theric Jepson announces pieces from 2024 issues that he has nominated for Pushcart awards.
Elizabeth Smith and Kelly McDonald run an online literary magazine, The Pensive. It is dedicated to publishing fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry by emerging writers who have had few opportunities to publish their work. Check it out!
The Mormon Lit Blitz’s Holiday Lit Blitz finalists are starting to be released. Here is the publication schedule of the short-short stories and poems. They will all be available in online print and as podcasts.
2 Dec. – “A Christmas in Orderville” by Scott Hales
3 Dec. – “Twenty-five Valentine’s Days Ago” by Lara Niedermeyer
4 Dec. – “The History of a Christmas Carol” by Jeanine Bee
5 Dec. – “Easter Morning” by Merrijane Rice
6 Dec. – “A Wolfenoot Carol” by Jeanna Mason Stay
7 Dec. – “Tastes of Hope and Sorrow” by James Goldberg
9 Dec. – “Multiversal Mother’s Day” by Annaliese Lemmon
10 Dec. – “d. 11 April 1847 Winter Quarters” by Ali Benson Moulton
11 Dec. – “Three Saints Days” by Michelle Graabek-Wallace
12 Dec. – “Viewing Christmas Displays as a Family, Post-Divorce” by Micah Cozzens
13 Dec. – “Vlad Tidings” by Lee Allred
14 Dec. – “La Celebracion”/”The Celebration” by Mario Montani
Creative Nonfiction
Claudia Lauper Bushman. I Claudia: The Life of Claudia Lauper Bushman. Greg Kofford, Sept. An autobiography of a remarkable woman, Latter-day Saint, and scholar.
Laurie Lee Hall. Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman. Signature, November. “Laurie Lee’s growing-up years were defined by the conflict between her physical condition as a boy and her inherent identity as a girl. Unable to explain or resolve her gender dysphoria, she committed to living her adult life as a male. She joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, eventually becoming chief architect of its temples and an ecclesiastical leader. Laurie Lee details how she risked everything to live true to her long-suppressed gender identity.”
Laurie Lee Hall on The Cultural Hall podcast. Signature Books podcast.
Nathan Kitchen. Under the Boughs of Love. BCC Press, November. A memoir from the former president of Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Family, and Friends. “This call for a “renewal” within the Latter-day Saint tradition provides a compelling glimpse not only into Kitchen’s own moving experience, but into the world of paradoxes, pain, and progress inhabited by those who aim to balance both queer and Mormon identities.”
Nathan Kitchen on The Cultural Hall podcast.
Scott Russell Morris. Points of Tangency. Cornerstone Press, September. “Within the pages of Points of Tangency, a sequence of brilliant personal essays, Scott Russell Morris, a closeted queer Mormon, tells the story of meeting and then marrying his now wife. His story, told with grace, compassion, and dexterity, forges the framework of a life lived, and lives living together, in our mysterious and dynamic present.”
Scott Morris on the Paper Cuts podcast.
Poetry
Elizabeth C. Garcia. Resurrected Body. Cider Press, August 2024. Won the 2023 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize Book Award. “Elizabeth Garcia offers us one vivid version of what to expect from parenthood based on the experiences of both mother and child…. These poems weave together God, Mary Shelley, autobiography, and more, and the results are intriguing and surprising.” (Katie Manning).
Chris McClelland. Dementia: Poems. Self, October. “A chapbook of philosophical and spiritual-oriented poems, meditative and spanning the ancient religious sites of the Yucatan, the ghost-filled streets of Paris, and the verdant countryside of Ireland dotted with medieval castles. As a recent convert to the Mormon faith, McClelland allows these voices to explore questions of inspiration and personal spiritual impressions through his new Latter Day Saint perspective.”
Ruben Ransud. Y ahora, alma mía, ¿qué te queda? Gabriel González, October. Poems in Spanish by Ruben Núñez (1952-1996), Gabriel’s uncle. Part of Gabriel’s “Dead LDS Poets Collection (En Espanol) series”. Gabriel writes about Ruben and his life here.
Ethan Unklesbay. Behold the Man. Self, Oct. A collection of ekphrastic poems, responses to art in a Christian art gallery. His third book of poems.
Film
Heretic, a psychological horror film about two sister missionaries trapped and tortured by a psychopathic atheist, was written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, and released in November. It has prompted a large number of reviews by LDS and LDS-adjacent writers. Here are a few:
Mckay Coppins. “A Horror Movie About an Atheist Who Won’t Shut Up”. The Atlantic
Lane Welch. “The Choice to Believe”. Wayfare
Nathan McLaughlin. “A Post-secular Masterpiece”. AML
Russell Stevenson. “The Faith of a Heretic”. AML
Randy Astle. “Heretic, Humanism, and the Modern Transcendental Mormon Film”. AML
Podcast panel reviews: The Cultural Hall. Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods discuss making the movie and their use of Mormon ideas at the Mormon Stories podcast.
The Carpenter. Garett Batty, director and co-writer. Kameron Krebs, co-writer and lead actor. Theater release in November. “After the death of his father, a fighter becomes an apprentice to a mysterious Carpenter”.
The Cultural Hall Podcast on The Carpenter.
The Faith of Angels. Garrett Batty, director and writer. Stars J. Michael Finley, Cameron Arnett, Kirby Heyborne. Based on a true story from the 1980s, when a man is inspired to look for a missing child in an abandoned mine. Theater release in September-October.
This Week in Mormons Podcast on The Faith of Angels.
A one-night-only screening of The Angel, a short Mormon Folk Horror film, directed by Barrett & Jessica Burgin, followed by a Q&A with the Burgins. Monday, December 9, 7pm, Rivoli Theater, Springville, Utah.
AML events
Remember, the Annual Meeting of Mormon Scholars in the Humanities & Association for Mormon Letters will be held May 28-30, 2025, in Snow College, Ephraim, Utah.
Nominations are now open for the 2024 AML Awards. Visit tinyurl.com/AMLnominee to nominate your favorite literary works (and other associated artistic works) published or first performed in 2024 by, for, or about (a) Mormon(s). You can self-nominate your own work, as well.
Visual Art
In our neighbor genre, visual art, be sure to check out this landmark new book:
Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader. Edited by Amanda Beardsley and Mason Allred. Oxford University Press, December.
The first comprehensive critical examination of Mormon art, it offers a broad interdisciplinary perspective on Mormon art, and includes over 200 high-quality color illustrations.
Foreword, Richard Bushman and Glen Nelson
Introduction, Amanda K. Beardsley and Mason Kamana Allred
1. A Theology of Mormon Art, Terryl Givens
2. Temple Art Renewal, 2000-2022, Colleen McDannell
3. Moving Pictures: Subjectivity and Mormon Identity in Documentary Film, Randy Astle
4. Establishing Zion: Identity and Communitas in Early Latter-day Saint Art, Ashlee Whitaker
5. The Public Image: How the World Learned to See Mormonism, from Cartoons to World’s Fair, Nathan Rees
6. Creating Something Extraordinary: Nineteenth Century Latter-day Saint Women and Their Folk Art, Jennifer Reeder
7. Globetrotting Mormon Women Artists and the Art of Travel, 1900-1950, Heather Belnap
8. Aspirations of Grandeur and Tempering Restraints in Mormon Temple Design, Josh Probert
9. Success in Circuit: Brigham Young’s Big Ten, Mary Campbell
10. Mormon Art and Architecture in Mexico: Between Mexico and the United States, Rebecca Janzen
11. Defining the Mormon Landscape: Photography and the Representation and Evolution of a Distinctive American Space, James Swenson
12. The Paris Art Mission, Linda Jones Gibbs
13. LDS Artists and the Art Students League of New York, Glen Nelson
14. George Dibble and Mormonism in Utah, Glen Nelson
15. ‘Draw All Men Unto Him’: The Mormon Art and Belief Movement, Menachem Wecker
16. Race and Latter-day Saint Art, Paul Reeve
17. Native Americans, Mormonism, and Art, Carlyle Constantino
18. The Piety of Perspective: Bodies, Media, and Cinematic Experience in Latter-day Saint film, 1970-2020, Mason Kamana Allred
19. Latter-day Saint Feminism and Art, Amanda K. Beardsley
20. “Who Did I Leave Out and Should Have Included?”: The History and Influence of the International Art Competitions at the Church History Museum, Laura Poulsen Howe
21. Being Relevant: On the BYU Department of Art in the Twenty-first Century, Analisa Coats Sato
22. Toward a Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art, Chase Westfall
Afterword, Laura Allred Hurtado
The BYU Museum of Art is featuring a John Held, Jr. exhibit, curated by Glen Nelson, December 6, 2024 – April 26, 2025. “Among the Jazz age’s most iconic artists was cartoonist and illustrator John Held, Jr. As his work graced the covers and pages of magazines like Vanity Fair, Life, Cosmopolitan, and The New Yorker and as his designs found their way into newspapers, advertisements, and books across the country, Held became known for his colorful drawings of flappers, his humorous illustrations of college life, and his sharp, witty social commentary on American culture in the 1920s and 30s.”
Gallery Talks, December 11, 12:10 PM – 12:40 PM: Join Glen Nelson to explore the new exhibition John Held, Jr. He will be yourguide through the life and career of this 20th-century artist as you discover new favorite works, hear behind-the-scenes stories, and discuss your questions. It’s free and open to all!