Glen Nelson and Garrett Batty will be honored for their career accomplishments at the Association for Mormon Letters/Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference, May 30, 2025, at Snow College, Ephraim, Utah. Glen Nelson will receive the AML Lifetime Achievement Award and Garrett Batty will receive the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters. Interviews with Glen and Garrett will be published on the AML Youtube channel by May 28, and both will appear remotely at the AML Awards Ceremony on May 30, 4:30 PM.
Below is basic information about Glen’s and Garrett’s careers. Full award citations will be announced and published here by May 30.
Glen Nelson: AML Lifetime Achievement Award
Glen Nelson is one of the leading figures in Latter-day Saint art, both as a facilitator of others’ work and as an author and artist himself.
In 1999, Glen founded the Mormon Artists Group, a collective of artists, musicians, and authors, and as director of the group he helped facilitate the creation, promotion, and sale of over thirty works by 85 different LDS artists. In 2017 he co-created with Richard Bushman the Mormon Arts Center, which in 2019 was renamed the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. They held the first Mormon Arts Center Festival in 2017, and have continued since then to hold festivals, seminars, and commission and support artistic works by Latter-day Saints from all over the world, in a wide range of genres, including visual arts, musical arts, and literary arts. Glen has remained a driving force within the organization, currently serving as Director of Special Projects.
Glen is a critic/scholar, author, poet, and librettist. He is the author of: 34 books; 137 essays, articles, and interviews; 22 works of fiction, theater, and poetry; the librettist of 8 operas and 22 choral works, art songs, and hymns. As a ghostwriter, three of his books have become nonfiction New York Times bestsellers. He curated the museum exhibition, John Held, Jr. (Brigham Young University Museum of Art, 2024-25) and three gallery exhibitions, each with an accompanying exhibition catalog. His most recent book is John Held, Jr.’s Fiction (Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, 2022). His latest recording, with composer Ethan Wickman, is the oratorio, To a Village Called Emmaus (American Festival Orchestra and Chorus, 2023), and his most recent opera, with Grammy Award-winning composer Lansing McLoskey, is The Captivity of Hannah Duston (Guerilla Opera, 2021), recipient of a 2024 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. He is a contributing author to Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader (Oxford University Press, 2024) and The Difficult Part, Brian Kershisnik: A Mid-career Retrospective (BYU MOA, 2024).
Garrett Batty: Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters
Garrett Batty has emerged as a leading creator of films that address Latter-day Saint experiences, although his work has certainly not been limited to Mormon characters and situations. Feature films that he directed and at least co-wrote include:
Scout Camp (2009)
The Saratov Approach (2013) (AML Film Award Winner)
Freetown (2015) (AML Film Award Finalist)
Out of Liberty (2019) (AML Film Award Finalist)
Faith of Angels (2024) (AML Film Award Finalist)
The Carpenter (2025)
Scout Camp is Boy Scout/coming-of-age comedy. The Saratov Approach and Freetown are both dramas based on true stories of LDS missionaries in danger, the first set in Russia, and the second in Sierra Leone (and filmed in Ghana). Both received awards and considerable attention for taking Mormon cinema into higher quality, artistically satisfying directions. Out of Liberty tells the story of the jailer who held Joseph Smith and his companions at Liberty Jail. Faith of Angels is based on a true story, set in Utah in 1989, of a boy trapped in a cave and miracles that occurred around his rescue. The Carpenter is a fictional story in which Jesus of Nazareth mentors a young man.
Garrett has also directed and/or written the documentary The Journey Home (2016), the Church’s Book of Mormon Video “Nephi and Lehi Testify of Jesus Christ” (2023), and thirteen episodes of the BYUtv sketch comedy program Studio C.
Taken together, Garrett’s output represents both great creative ability and a dedication to explore the inner lives of religious people in a wide variety of situations. The Smith-Pettit Foundation Award is designed to honor mid-career artists, and encourage them in their artistic development. We have every expectation that Garrett will go on to create many new and exciting works.