The Association for Mormon Letters is proud to present Glen Nelson with its 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award citation is given below, and a video of an interview with Glen, done by Laura Allred Hurtado, Executive Director, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Michael Hicks, Professor Emeritus, Music Theory, Brigham Young University, is available here. Glen will also be honored at the Association for Mormon Letters/Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference Awards Ceremony, May 30, 2025, at Snow College, Ephraim, Utah.
Award Citation
It takes a certain kind of person to become a Joyce scholar. The works of James Joyce are so full of allusions that their study is the literary version of an extreme endurance sport. It involves chasing obscure connections and catching subtle overtones of meaning. Signing up to take on Joyce is an open commitment to taking in world culture.
Glen Nelson claims that he gave up on Joyce scholarship forty years ago, after graduating from NYU. But we are beginning to suspect he simply followed some threads straight off the page and chased them with the tenacity of a bloodhound. Over the years, Glen has worked to trace Latter-day Saints through the currents of world culture. Whether he’s reintroducing us to John Held Jr. and Joseph Paul Vorst, casting a wide net to compile a database of Latter-day Saint composers, or chronicling a year of Latter-day Saint creativity for The Season, Glen has been a reliable and adventurous guide to the broad web of Latter-day Saint arts.
During this century, Glen has also been a key force in helping weave that web. In 1999, he founded the Mormon Artists Group, which made space for passion projects and collaborations. In 2017, he worked with Richard Bushman and others to launch the Mormon Arts Center, later the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, to bring together artists from different disciplines and build an informed audience and network of patrons. With his signature energy and warmth, Glen has made countless people feel connected to a larger tradition and community of creativity.
It’s a little difficult to understand where he finds the bandwidth, but while studying the arts and building community around the arts, Glen has also produced a frankly shocking quantity of the stuff. Though it’s entirely possible he’s got something coming out as we speak that will disrupt this count, he’s the author of 34 books; 137 essays, articles, and interviews; 22 works of fiction, theater, and poetry; and 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.
But all of that is a side gig, Glen insists. “My life’s purpose is not about producing things, as pleasant as that’s been,” he says. “I want to live an artful life and surround myself with people, things, and experiences I love and that bring continuous surprise, beauty, and insight.” Glen, it’s been our great delight to share this century with you and take in some of the same surprise. The Association for Mormon Letters is honored to mark those experiences with its Lifetime Achievement Award and a wish for many beauty-drenched years yet to come.