Angela Hallstrom has been presented with the 2026 AML Lifetime Achievement Award. Below is an interview, in which friends and colleagues Darlene Young and Lisa Olsen Tait talk to Angela about her career, with Darlene focusing on her literary career, editing, and service to AML, and Lisa focusing on her historical writing. It was broadcast at the Association for Mormon Letters online conference, June 20, 2026. It is followed by the award citation.
Celebrating Angela Hallstrom: An interview with Darlene Young and Lisa Olsen Tait
Award Citation
A “Lifetime Achievement” award indicates less that a recipient’s lifework is finished and more that her work shows significant impact and longevity. In the case of Angela Hallstrom, her work does these things and also shows great breadth across genres and communities within the LDS world. A writer, editor, educator, and therapist, she has enriched Mormon literature through her own creative writing, her institutional writing in the Church’s history department, and her editorial work for various publications.
Angela received her MFA from Hamline University and taught high school and college English and composition courses for several years, a good beginning to lifelong work of mentoring other writers. Later, she would serve as a department editor at AML’s literary journal Irreantum, and would even step in as emergency main editor after the sudden death of editor Laraine Wilkins. That year (2006), Angela’s intense work combing through Laraine’s records and bringing out the issue Laraine had planned earned her a special award for service to AML. Angela went on to serve as one of the head editors of Irreantum 2007-2010, managing several AML short fiction contests.
In addition to nurturing and publicizing the work of LDS writers through Irreantum, Angela served on the editorial boards of the journals Segullah and BYU Studies Quarterly. In 2010, she used her editorial gifts in the creation of a new anthology of Mormon-related short fiction, Dispensation: Latter-Day Fiction. This important work filled an important gap in the market, providing audiences much-needed access to the best short fiction published since Eugene England’s 1992 anthology, Bright Angels and Familiars. Recognizing its importance, the Association for Mormon Letters awarded this anthology the 2010 award for editing, praising Angela’s “comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter” and her ability to “synthesize the unwieldy mass into a cohesive, engaging, and portable package.”
Over her career, Angela has not just fostered the work of others, but has herself contributed to the canon of excellent LDS fiction. Her 2008 novel-in-stories, Bound on Earth, was immediately hailed as one of the great Mormon novels of the modern era, praised for its literary skill as much as its focus on Mormon characters. Its AML Novel Award citation stated, “Hallstrom’s Mormon characters have real problems, the kinds of struggles that everyone has, regardless of religion. But they also have a Mormon worldview, and they view their problems from a background of belief. Part of Hallstrom’s genius lies in her ability to present this faithful background without either mockery or defensiveness—the way many of us feel about our own faith. With her unerring eye for situation and skillful use of varying points of view, Hallstrom expertly weaves the characters’ faith into the stories in a way that makes their motivations clear and their faith believable.”
From 2016 to 2021, Angela worked as a writer in the Church’s history department, hired specifically to help produce the historical narrative series, Saints. This series, the first of its kind in church publication, presents an account of the founding of the church and true stories of LDS people around the world in a readable style that is both novelistic and absolutely accurate. Angela was a primary writer on the project, contributing particularly to Volume 3. In her narrative work, she integrated meticulously-researched historical materials into accessible, character-driven stories that make church history accessible and exciting for a wide variety of readers.
In recent years, Angela has worked as a marriage and family therapist while continuing to serve the AML frequently as an awards judge. She plans to integrate her new expertise in family counseling with her interest in telling LDS stories into a future project. We look forward to reading the result. For her work as a teacher, writer, mentor, editor, and all-around proponent of literature by, for, and about the Latter-day Saints, the Association for Mormon Letters is pleased to present its award for lifetime achievement to Angela Hallstrom.