We are pleased to announce the 2022 Association for Mormon Letters Awards finalists in Novel, Short Fiction, and Short Fiction Collection. The final awards will be announced and presented on April 29, as part of the 2023 Association for Mormon Letters Virtual Conference. We will be announcing the other category finalists over the coming week, including Comics, Creative Nonfiction, Criticism, Drama, Film, Middle Grade Novel, Picture Book, Podcast, Poetry, Religious Nonfiction, and Young Adult Novel. The finalists and winners are chosen by juries of authors, academics, and critics. The announcements include book blurbs and author biographies, usually adapted from the author and publisher websites.
Novel
Jacob L. Bender. And All Eternity Shook. Ships of Hagoth
A young missionary comes home after two years in Puerto Rico only to find his mother on her deathbed. Enraged, he wrestles with his God in passionate prayer as he pleads for her life; images and memories of his mission and his Mom jump, cut, and splice together in a cinematic crescendo, flashing furiously before his eyes as though he were the one dying and not her; all as he feels after some miracle, some impossibility, and the peace which surpasses understanding.
Jacob L. Bender is also the author of Modern Death in Irish and Latin American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), a critical study similarly influenced by his Puerto Rican mission service and his mother’s passing. In LDS studies specifically, he has previously written for Dialogue, Sunstone, Peculiar Pages, and the Eugene England Foundation, as well as at Ships of Hagoth, which he co-edits. He has been a finalist for the AML Criticism Award. He is currently an English Professor at Middlesex College in New Jersey, where he lives down shore with his wife and two children.
Darin Cozzens. The History of Honey Spring. Zarahemla Books
Utah native Jim Ray is the only child of deceased parents. When he comes home from war in April 1966, he also finds himself the only heir of a distant and dying cousin in Wyoming. On paper, the inheritance includes almost four hundred acres in the Balford Valley and a water source known as Honey Spring. But Jim soon learns that he has inherited much besides cropland and swamp pasture. The spring, it turns out, is more than a geographicdivide between neighbors. Thanks to the vicissitudes of fortune, the history of that divide is a history of friendship soured by grief and loss, envy and ambition, accusation and suspicion. Moving into a community polarized by the rift, Jim realizes that he has survived one kind of war only to become entangled in another. He can perpetuate the fight, or, because of his growing feelings for a girl from the other side, he can make the first moves toward forgiving and healing. Finally he must decide his place in the history of Honey Spring.
Darin Cozzens is the author of Light of the New Day and Other Stories and The Last Blessing of J. Guyman LeGrand (which won the 2010 AML Short Fiction Award). He has written numerous stories that have appeared in Greensboro Review, Cimarron Review, Weber Studies, River Oak Review, Irreantum, and Weber: The Contemporary West. He teaches at Surry Community College in Dobson, North Carolina.
Declan Hyde. The Resurrection Box. Gypsy Fox Publishing
After the polygamous wife of a local miner loses her only child in a freak accident, she quickly spirals into despair. She is saved by a vision, which she believes is meant to send her on a quest into the mountains near her Mormon settlement to find a magic coffin which has the power to bring her son back to life. Accompanying her is Bill Pratchett, a rough-around-the-edges trapper who volunteers to serve as her unofficial guide and bodyguard, eager to use this alleged coffin for his own personal benefit. Only they are not the only ones looking for the coffin. Unbeknownst to them, Bill and Zina are on a collision course with calamity. Because there are fouler and more evil things than men lurking in those ancient hills. There are monsters there as well.
Declan Hyde is a lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is an avid horror fan, and lives in Utah.
Steven L. Peck. Heike’s Void. BCC Press
“Heike’s Void is a radical experiment with whether or not the atonement of Christ is truly infinite and eternal, without limits, or whether it is something else. And if it is something else, then how can any of us hope for it to ever be enough? There is no arithmetic of salvation in this novel . . . There is no bicycle to be paid for with piggy bank pennies. Instead, there are urgent but impossible questions about whether the mercy of God indeed ‘overpowereth justice,’ and if it does, do any of us actually believe it.”--Jennifer Quist, Dialogue
Steven L. Peck is an ecology professor at Brigham Young University, publishing in the fields of insect evolutionary ecology, ecological mathematics, and philosophy of biology. He is an author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, which explore relationships with science, religion, evolution, consciousness, and the ways humans interact with the other inhabitants of this planet. He is a two-time winner of the AML Novel Award (The Scholar of Moab, 2011, Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats, 2017), and once for short story (“Two-Dog Dose,” 2014). He was awarded the 2021 Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.
Short Fiction
Marcelo Bighetti. “The Intelligences.” Irreantum 19:4, Winter 2022 (Originally “As inteligências.” Translated from Portuguese to English by Kent S. Larsen)
Marcelo Bighetti has been writing fantasy and science fiction since 2008, with many published short stories. He is the founder of the Amazing Mind Academy, cofounder of ABESUD (Associação Brasileira de Escritores Santos dos Últimos Dias) and cofounder of the science fiction online magazine Táquion FC. He was the editor of the science fiction online magazine Somnium. His short story “Novo Início” was a bestseller on Amazon. “As inteligências” was first published in Aquilo que nos move, edited by Rex P. Nielson and Kent S. Larsen (2010).
Michaelbrent Collings. “The Profile of Daria Black.” In Gilded Glass: Twisted Myths and Shattered Fairytales. WordFire Press
Michaelbrent Collings is a bestselling novelist, produced screenwriter, and multiple Bram Stoker Award finalist. While he is best known for horror (and is one of the most successful indie horror authors in the United States), he has also written bestselling thriller, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, humor, young adult, and middle grade works, and Western Romance. He has been a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award (twice), a Dragon Award (twice), a RONE Award, and a Whitney Award (twice).
Ryan Habermeyer. “The Algorithms of Happiness.” Iron Horse Literary Review, 24:1, 2022
Ryan Habermeyer received his M.F.A. from the Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. His award-winning stories and essays have received two Pushcart Prize nominations and been published in Hotel Amerika, Cincinnati Review, Carolina Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Mid-American Review, and Phoebe, among others. His short fiction collection The Science of Lost Futures won an AML Award in 2018, and he was an AML short fiction award finalist in 2020. He is Associate Professor of creative writing at Salisbury University, in Maryland. Although the story is not available online, there is a video of Habermeyer reading the story here. It goes from 22:00 to 37:45.
Ryan Habermeyer is the author of the short story collection, The Science of Lost Futures (BoA 2018), which won an AML Award in 2018. His stories and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from Conjunctions, Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, Cincinnati Review, Puerto del Sol, Seneca Review, Blackbird, Raleigh Review, DIAGRAM, and Fairy Tale Review, among others. He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Salisbury University.
Tygan Shelton. “Worlds Without End.” Irreantum 19:4, December 2022
Tygan Shelton‘s story “The Missionary” appeared in Daily Science Fiction. He grew up in Montana and Idaho and is a graduate of the once and future BYU 100 Hour Board. He now lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two children, where he reads and writes code and speculative fiction.
Nathan Shumate. “Twilight of the Eye Creature.” Cold Fusion Media
Nathan Shumate is a Utah author, small-press publisher, assemblage artist and dilettante (although he prefers the term “Renaissance Man”). He has written (and gotten paid for) comic books, screenplays, and various forms of fiction and non-fiction. His short stories have appeared in the magazine Amazing Stories, the anthology Monsters & Mormons, and other venues. He is the publisher and instigator of the Lovecraftian pulp space opera Space Eldritch anthologies, and cartoons at CheapCaffeine.net.
Short Fiction Collection
Lee Allred. Down the Arches of the Years. Hemelein Publications
Down the nights and down the days, down the arches of the years, down the labyrinthine ways, hear the call, the call of the hounds of history. Masterfully woven throughout Lee Allred’s works are historical events, places, and people, echoing back through the labyrinthine arches of the years. Here find offers you can’t refuse, changed allegiances, unquiet ghosts, vampires in redrock deserts, lake monsters, fell beings that plot and scheme with royalty, golems of clay, elder gods and unspeakable horrors—both slumbering and awake—and those brave souls that stand between the darkness and the light, protecting those unable to protect themselves. Follow the echoing of the hounds into this collection of tales, penned by a master of the imagination.
Lee Allred has written several dozen fiction stories that have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Pulphouse, and in book anthologies edited by the likes of S.M. Stirling, Harry Turtledove, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He has also scripted many comic books with his brother Michael, two of which were finalists for AML Comics Awards. His novella “For the Strength of the Hills” was named a Sidewise Award for Alternate History finalist, and his Mormon alternative history has appeared in States of Deseret and All Made of Hinges.
Michael Fillerup. The year they gave women the priesthood and other stories. Signature Books
In this collection of seventeen short stories, award-winning author Michael Fillerup takes us through the wide range of Mormon culture and creates discomfort in the process. These stories—some lengthy, others only a few pages, all stand on their own throughout varied themes and diverse voices, each packing a punch that will long stay with the reader.
“The prophet released his stranglehold on the podium and leaned back, raising his voice,” Fillerup writes in the title essay. “‘The Lord in his infinite wisdom has determined that the time is right for all worthy females in the church, ages twelve and above, to be ordained to the holy priesthood.’”
There were gasps, followed by a long hush—shocked silence was more like it.
“Brethren, the Lord giveth and he taketh away. From this day forward, all males will be released from their priesthood responsibilities, including all rights, privileges, and authority. We would like to thank those of you who have faithfully served in your callings and who have honored your priesthood over the years. Those who would like to give a vote of thanks to these individuals may do so by raising the right hand. … To be perfectly clear,” the prophet said, “brethren, you have all just been un-ordained.”
This, and much more awaits, and Fillerup never disappoints.
Michael Fillerup is the author of numerous short stories, a short story collection (Visions and Other Stories), two novels (Beyond the River and Go in Beauty), and co-author of a third novel (Just a Teacher). He has also written children’s books and published several articles on indigenous language preservation. He has won AML Awards for short fiction in 1986 and 1991. The founder and former director of Puente de Hozho Tri-lingual Magnet School, Fillerup lives with his wife, Rebecca, in northern Arizona.
William Morris. The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories. BCC Press
The 18 short stories in The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories range from alternate history and science fiction to Mormon folk realism and experimental literary forms. This story collection is for Mormons of all stripes who are open to exploring core questions of Mormonism–including history, speculative theology, gender and family dynamics, and the future of both the LDS Church and Mormonism more generally–in alternative, weird, strange, sometimes humorous, sometimes harrowing (but not too harrowing) ways.
William Morris writes, edits, and writes about Mormon literature he is the author of the story collections Dark Watch and other Mormon-American stories (AML Award finalist, 2016). He coedited the anthology Monsters & Mormons and edited States of Deseret (both from Peculiar Pages). His fiction has appeared in Irreantum, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and Big Echo: Critical SF. He won an AML Criticism Award in 2005 for editing the Mormon literary blog A Motley Vision, and has been an AML Award finalist three times for his writing and editing. His story “The Ward Organist” won Dialogue’s most recent short fiction contest and appeared in the Winter 2022 issue. He currently lives in Minnesota with his wife and daughter.
Lehua Parker. Sharks in an Inland Sea. Hemelein Publications
Like sharks exiled to an inland sea, here you’ll explore sideways worlds where things are not always what they seem. You’ll rise with a mom who won’t stay in her grave, cower at the might of a poi dog fairy godmother, and panic at the thought of your bones enshrined in a national monument. You’ll swim in dubious waters, walk with sharks, talk with ghosts, and wonder what it means to be a modern Hawaiian living in the high rocky mountains. Lehua Parker is a master of tension, voice, and authenticity. Writing from her Hawaiian and Utah Pioneer roots, her award-winning fiction, essays, and memoir effortlessly blend elements of horror, magical realism, and romance—all liberally sprinkled with her unique sense of humor. These stories thrill, chill, and warm the heart as they explore what it means to be fundamentally human. Or otherwise. (Edited and featuring a forward by Joe Monson.)
Lehua Parker writes speculative fiction for kids and adults often set in her native Hawai‘i. Her published works include the award-winning Niuhi Shark Saga trilogy. Her short stories have appeared in Va: Stories by Women of the Mona, Bamboo Ridge, and Dialogue. An advocate of indigenous voices in media and a graduate of The Kamehameha Schools, she is a frequent speaker at conferences, symposiums, and schools. When the right project wanders by, she’s also a freelance editor and story consultant. Now living in exile in high Rocky Mountains, during snowy winters she dreams of the beach.