In 1989, Signature Books published Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems, an anthology edited by BYU English faculty Eugene England and Dennis Clark. It was a momentous event in the field of Mormon letters. First, because it was the most significant—broadest, deepest, most dievese, and most accomplished—collection of Mormon poetry published to that date. Second, because the collection was reviewed in the Spring 1990 edition of BYU Studies by BYU English professor Richard Cracroft and that review sparked a debate, which continued through late 1994 (with further reverberations throughout the 1990s ..read more

Over the course of almost two and a half decades of thinking, talking, and writing about Mormon art and culture (especially Mormon literature), I have been torn between arguing for and against exceptionalism. I have mostly argued against it. I’ve discussed how Orson F. Whitney’s declaration that we will have Shakespeares and Miltons of our own can be situated in an overall ecosystem of minority/minor cultures/literatures worried about the fact of their belated modernity. I’ve shown how Mormon fiction often follows larger market trends, especially those found among U.S. Evangelical Christians ..read more

My novella The Unseating of Dr. Smoot is now available in print and ebook form [here’s direct purchase links for: Amazon (print/Kindle) | Kobo (ebook)]. This novella is a return to me writing contemporary Mormon literary fiction (specifically faithful realism, but my brand of it, of course) after writing mostly strange Mormon fiction for several years. It’s about a female Mormon academic who has recently had her tenure clock at UW-Madison reset and how that disappointment combined with everything that happens on a trip to Provo to present a lecture on Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels unmoor ..read more

Some writers intentionally try to be difficult in their writing. To sneer at the critics. Or make some grand point about literature. Or demonstrate their virtuosity. Or prove their anti-capitalist/anti-bourgeois/anti-normies, etc. cred. Or simply to entertain themselves. I promise that that’s not what I’m trying to do in “A Mormon Writer Visits Spirit Prison”, the final story in my collection The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories. And so I’m totally fine with readers who read the story in a way that’s different from how it’s printed on the page. And I understand that some readers will bou ..read more

Hello. My first short story collection is now available in paperback. It’s a print on demand version via Amazon. It’ll look similar to the BCC Press books but with my less sophisticated cover design and a glossy cover because the color just doesn’t work well with the matte.  I’m sorry about the pricing. Amazon is changing their POD base pricing. And I would like to make a little bit off of the sales of my books. Rest assured that all revenue goes back into my writing (and music making–more news on that later this summer).  Some thank you’s The paperback version is thanks to donors t ..read more

Here are the discussion questions for the seventeenth and final email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form. Click here to read the full archives of Season 1 Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism). What do you think of Clark’s overall project, especially his core concept of liberating form? Which essay (or response from to an essay) did you find the most interesting? What might a current version of Clark’s project look like? What would ..read more

We’ve been talking about writing short stories over on the AML’s Discord server, and while general advice is good (and the advice given was great), I think it can be useful to see specific examples of the processes we tend to describe in general, often abstract, terms. “A Ring Set Not with Garnet but Sardius” from my BCC Press collection The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories is my longest gestating story—from initial idea to publication—to date. So I thought it’d be interesting to both writers and readers to track the evolution of the story. You do not need to have read the story to find ..read more

Here are the discussion questions for the sixteenth email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form. If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: Graduation! To What? Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism). What’s the best advice to college graduates you’ve ever encountered? What barriers do you encounter when trying to continue to learn? What domains of knowledge/creativity, etc. are of ..read more

Here are the discussion questions for the fifteenth email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form. If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: Whose Yoke is Easy? Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism). Do you agree with Alan Keele’s observation as reported by Clark? Or is that just the middlebrow defending its’ middlebrow-ness? Should we even accept the premise of the sublime vs. the ..read more

Here are the discussion questions for the fourteenth email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form. If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: In the Midst of Miracle—So What?. Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism). Tell me your favorite poem. Bonus points if it was written in the 20th or 21st century. In what ways might Clark’s three questions What? Why? So What? be useful? Is it l ..read more