There has been so much interesting Mormon-related short fiction coming out in the last few months, I thought it was time to break out this occasional effort at seasonal cataloging. Not coincidentally, my own co-edited collection, The Path and the Gate: Mormon Short Fiction, is among the recent flood. Wayfare Magazine’s recent move into publishing fiction (as well as poetry, personal essays, and more), has also played a key role in the recent renaissance. Editor Zachary Davis, Fiction editor Jeanine Bee, poetry editor Kathryn Knight Sonntag, and the rest of the team are to be applauded for making the magazine one of the most reliable places to find Mormon literature, along with Dialogue, Irreantum, and the Mormon Lit Blitz.
Short fiction (and more)
Irreantum, Fall 2023, 20:3. “Genre”
Liz Busby & William Morris, issue editors.
Introduction: The 21st century has seen an explosion of Latter-day Saints writing genre fiction for national and international audiences . . .The genre issue brings together a variety of works—from alternate history, science fiction, and fable to urban fantasy, humor, and horror—all of which use the tools and tropes of genre to explore Mormon characters, settings, themes, and symbols in specific, speculative, overt ways.
Willow Dawn Becker. “It’s About the People Under You”
Katherine Cowley. “The Case of the Missing Sacrament Bread”
Chanel Earl. “You Are Beautiful, Dead, Whole”
Shayla Frandsen. “The Incident at Burning Bush Ranch”
Nate Givens. “Remember the Blood”
W. O. Hemsath. “The Double-Snatcher”
Makoto Hunter. “Welded”
Declan Hyde. “7 Devils”
Emily Feuz Jensen. “The Year the Graveyard Flooded”
Alejandro Seta. “This is What Happened in Trígonus” (In Spanish and English, translated by Gabriel Gonzalez Nunez)
D. C. Wynters. “The Archaemaji”
Mathilda Zeller. “The Haunted”
23 October: “Nexus of Everything,” Merrijane Rice
24 October: “Refried Dreams,” Cristie Cowles Charles
25 October: “Second Coming,” Michael Hicks
26 October: “This Time and This Season,” Chanel Earl
27 October: “The Pear Tree,” Stan Absher
28 October: “A Young Mother’s Sacrament,” Emily Harris Adams
30 October: “Earthworm Lore,” Stan Absher
31 October: “Creature from the Back Lagoon,” Lee Allred
1 November: “Antelife,” Dan Mabee
2 November: “The Cost,” Liz Busby
3 November: “Future Genealogists,” Madison Beckstrand
4 November: “Nine Sunsets,” Chanel Earl
James Goldberg, Nicole Wilkes Goldberg, and Mattathias Singh. Tales of Chelm First Ward. Wayfare Magazine, Oct-Nov. “Marrying in the Church”, “How the Church Came to Chelm”, “Ministering Angels”, “Oskar the Miser Pays Fast Offerings”. And more to come. Based on Eastern European Jewish folktales, and the modern versions by authors like Issac Bashives Singer, set in an Eastern European congregation in 2018-2020.
Mormon Ghost Stories. A website by “Moroni’s Ghost”, it published one ghost story for every day in October.
The Path and the Gate: Mormon Short Fiction. Edited by Andrew Hall and Robert Raleigh. Signature Books.
The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi describes the journey to eternal life as going through a gate of ordinances and traveling a “straight and narrow path.” Twenty-three authors took that gospel roadmap passage as a prompt to write “a Mormon story.” They responded with a surprisingly wide range of realistic and fantastic tales. Featuring short stories by Todd Robert Petersen, Eric Freeze, Annette Haws, Mattathias Singh, William Morris, Joe Plicka, Alison Brimley, Tim Wirkus, Jennifer Quist, Heidi Naylor, Theric Jepson, Danny Nelson, Phyllis Barber, Ryan McIlvain, Jack Harrell, David G. Pace, Charity Shumway, Ryan Shoemaker, Michael Fillerup, Larry Menlove, Holly Welker, Ryan Habermeyer, and Steven L. Peck.
The Path and the Gate discussion and promotion:
Wayfare Magazine article: “Things to Seek After: An Exploration of Latter-day Saint Literature.” Several of the authors in The Path and the Gate: Mormon Short Fiction respond to these questions: “Why should I even bother to read Mormon short stories?”
Podcasts about the book:
Signature Books podcast (Raleigh, Hall)
Center for Latter-day Saints Art (Authors panel, Peterson, McIlvain, Naylor)
Center for Latter-day Saints Art (Editors panel, Raleigh, Hall, Quist)
Dialogue Book Report (Jepson, Nelson, Peck)
Signature newsletter interview with Raleigh and Hall about the collection.
An authors’ reading on November 17, 6pm at The King’s English, Salt Lake City, featuring Phyllis Barber, Annette Haws, David G. Pace, and Larry Menlove.
There is a GoFundMe page to pay the authors more. People can order signed copies and other book swag.
More short stories and collections:
Jaleta Clegg. Waiting for Elephants. Hemelein, September. Speculative short fiction collection.
Chanel Earl. “No Two People are Not on Fire”. Wayfare, July.
Charles Shiro Inouye. Hymns of Silence. BCC Press, Sept. Short fiction collection about Inouye’s home region of rural central Utah.
William Morris. “Filling the Measure”. Wayfare, Oct.
Theric Jepson. “The Bishop’s Chapbook”. Wayfare, Aug.
Gabriel Gonzalez Nunez. “Documents for the North America Article.” Wayfare, Sept. Alternative history of the Church starting among indigenous people in South America, using a series of historical documents to be used for a Church website article. Both English and Spanish versions available.
Moroni’s Ghost. “The Twilight Conference”. Mormon Ghost Stories website, Oct. Wayfare, Oct.
Lee Robison. “No More Sister than St. Nick”. Dialogue, Fall 2023. An older cowboy poet is taken aback by changes in his family, the ward, and the Christmas pageant. Here is a discussion between Robison and Dialogue editor Jennifer Quist about the story.
Ryan Shoemaker. “Come As You Are”. New Ohio Review, August. “A nostalgic tribute to Kurt Cobain and the grunge era of the early 1990s.” Two Mormon boys drive a stoned Kurt Cobain around Hollywood, take him home for dinner.
Novels
Mette Ivie Harrison. Resurrection Rites. BCC Press, October. Third in the Vampires in the Temple series. “Jack Hardy has been working as a private investigator after leaving the Salt Lake Police Department and becoming his younger sister Janey’s guardian as she copes with her new werewolf transformations. He’s on a simple infidelity case when he stumbles into a strange ritual that has elements of both the Mormon temple and vampire blood. When all of the participants turn up dead the next day, Jack’s former partner, new Police Chief Andy Young, asks him to step in to help. Jack joins forces with old friends and new to figure out how to stop those who are chasing immortality from dying in their quest, and deals with a threat to his sister as their father decides it’s time to marry her off just as she is adjusting to junior high school in Utah.”
Theric Jepson. Just Julie’s Fine. BCC Press, November. A novel set in the same 1990s BYU universe as the novel Byuck. Darlene Young blurb: “Reading this book is like catching an affectionate wink from the guy who sits on the back row in Gospel Doctrine class smiling to himself as he does crossword puzzles on his phone so that you think he’s not listening but who always comes out with the comment that turns the discussion into something bigger, something that matters. Jepson treats his characters—these glorious, quirky, hilarious young people trying to figure out their places in the world, trying to understand their own hearts—with humor, yes, but also with a subtle tenderness, so that we recognize their yearnings. This book is as fun as a pick-up game of Pictionary, but just when you think it’s all Peanut M&Ms and Twizzlers, holiness appears as if on a silver tray passed by the deacons. The ending sneaks up on you like your home teacher (minister) on a unicycle bearing mint brownies, and, like him, is sweet and surprisingly healing. The sunset our Classic Protagonist rides off into is a different sunset than she had thought she was aiming for, a better sunset, and that makes all the difference. It makes this book true.”
Poetry
Tacey M. Atsitty. (At) Wrist. University of Wisconsin Press, November. Winner of the U.of Wisconsin Press’ Brittingham Prize in Poetry. “Tacey M. Atsitty melds inherited forms such as the sonnet with her Diné and religious experiences to boldly and beautifully reveal a love that can last for eternity.”
Merrijane Rice. Out of the Dust: Book of Mormon Poems. Self, August.
Ethan Unklesbay. Dust. Self, October. JS Absher reviewed it.
Operas and plays
Lisa DeSpain. Song of the Nightingale. On Site Opera, New York City, September. Performed in three outdoor spaces in NYC, including a public courtyard at Brooklyn Commons, free and open to the public (and the elements). The opera was commissioned and produced by On Site Opera and Brookfield Properties Arts & Culture. Based on a Hans Christian Anderson story.
Stephen Ricks (music) and Stephen Tuttle (libretto). Baucis and Philemon. BYU, Oct. Opera. Commissioned by the Center for Latter-day Saints Arts.
Morag Shepherd. Worship. SLC Arts Hub, Salt Lake City, Oct. 6 –21. Produced with Immigrant Daughter’s Theatre. “Shepherd’s play is inspired by the case of a BYU professor who sexually and spiritually abused female students. While the play scrutinizes the intricate web of power, exposing duplicity and corrosive behavior, it goes beyond the vilification of those in power, delving into themes of forgiveness, redemption, and complicity.”
Criticism and history
Michael Austin and Rachel Meibos Helps. “‘The Gospel of Intelligence and Culture’: Literature and Literary Instruction in the Twentieth-Century MIA Curriculum.” BYU Studies, 62:2, Oct. 2023.
Nathan Smith Jones. “Insiders look back on the 20-year evolution of Mormon Cinema”. City Weekly, Nov. 1.