Mormon fiction is generally fiction by or about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are also referred to as Latter-day Saints or Mormons. Its history is commonly divided into four sections as first organized by Eugene England: foundations, home literature, the "lost" generation, and faithful realism. During the first fifty years of the church's existence, 1830–1880, fiction was not popular, though Parley P. Pratt wrote a fictional Dialogue between Joseph Smith and the Devil. With the emergence of the novel and short stories as popular reading material, Orson F. Whitney called on fellow members to write inspirational stories. During this "home literature" movement, church-published magazines published many didactic stories and Nephi Anderson wrote the novel Added Upon. The generation of writers after the home literature movement produced fiction that was recognized nationally but was seen as rebelling against home literature's outward moralization. Vardis Fisher's Children of God and Maurine Whipple's The Giant Joshua were prominent novels from this time period. In the 1970s and 1980s, authors started writing realistic fiction as faithful members of the LDS Church. Acclaimed examples include Levi S. Peterson's The Backslider and Linda Sillitoe's Sideways to the Sun. Home literature experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s when church-owned Deseret Book started to publish more fiction, including Gerald Lund's historical fiction series The Work and the Glory and Jack Weyland's novels.
Utah Valley University (UVU) is a public university in Orem, Utah. UVU offers master's, bachelor's, associate degrees, and certificates. Previously called Utah Valley State College, the school attained university status in July 2008.
Vardis Alvero Fisher was an American writer from Idaho who wrote popular historical novels of the Old West. After studying at the University of Utah and the University of Chicago, Fisher taught English at the University of Utah and then at the Washington Square College of New York University until 1931. He worked with the Federal Writers' Project to write the Works Project Administration The Idaho Guide, which was published in 1937. In 1939, Fisher wrote Children of God, a historical novel concerning the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The novel won the Harper Prize. In 1940, Fisher relocated to Hagerman, Idaho, and spent the next twenty years writing the 12-volume Testament of Man (1943–1960) series of novels, depicting the history of humans from cavemen to civilization. Fisher's novel Mountain Man (1965) was adapted in the film Jeremiah Johnson (1972).
Richard Lyman Bushman is an American historian and Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, having previously taught at Brigham Young University, Harvard University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware. Bushman is the author of Joseph Smith:Rough Stone Rolling, a biography of Joseph Smith, progenitor of the Latter Day Saint movement. Bushman also was an editor for the Joseph Smith Papers Project and now serves on the national advisory board. Bushman has been called "one of the most important scholars of American religious history" of the late-20th century. In 2012, a $3-million donation to the University of Virginia established the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies in his honor.
Orson Scott Card is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. He is the only person to have won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for his novel Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986). A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card co-produced, was released in 2013. Card also wrote the Locus Fantasy Award-winning series The Tales of Alvin Maker (1987–2003).
Matthew B. Brown was a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) author and historian whose emphasis was on the history and doctrine of Joseph Smith and his successors through Brigham Young.
William Grant Bagley was a historian specializing in the history of the Western United States and the American Old West. Bagley wrote about the fur trade, overland emigration, American Indians, military history, frontier violence, railroads, mining, and Utah and the Mormons.
Todd Robert Petersen was born in Moses Lake, Washington on August 17, 1969. He is a fiction writer and an academic currently based at Southern Utah University. He and his wife Alisa have three children.
Boyd Jay Petersen is program coordinator for Mormon Studies at Utah Valley University (UVU) and teaches English and literature at UVU and Brigham Young University (BYU). He has also been a biographer of Hugh Nibley, a candidate for the Utah House of Representatives, and president of the Association for Mormon Letters. He was named editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought for the term 2016-2020.
The Association for Mormon Letters (AML) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 to "foster scholarly and creative work in Mormon letters and to promote fellowship among scholars and writers of Mormon literature." Other stated purposes have included promoting the "production and study of Mormon literature" and the encouragement of quality writing "by, for, and about Mormons." The broadness of this definition of LDS literature has led the AML to focus on a wide variety of work that has sometimes been neglected in the Mormon community. It publishes criticism on such writing, hosts an annual conference, and offers awards to works of fiction, poetry, essay, criticism, drama, film, and other genres. It published the literary journal Irreantum from 1999 to 2013 and currently publishes an online-only version of the journal, which began in 2018. The AML's blog, Dawning of a Brighter Day, launched in 2009. As of 2012, the association also promotes LDS literature through the use of social media. The AML has been described as an "influential proponent of Mormon literary fiction."
The AML Awards are given annually by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) to the best work "by, for, and about Mormons." They are juried awards, chosen by a panel of judges. Citations for many of the awards can be found on the AML website.
Marilyn McMeen Miller Brown is an American novelist best known for her work within her native Mormon culture. She is the creator and namesake of the Marilyn Brown Novel Award.
Levi Savage Peterson is a Mormon biographer, essayist and fictionist whose best-known works include a seminal biography of Juanita Brooks, his own autobiography, and his novel The Backslider, a "standard for the contemporary Mormon novel." He was born and reared in the Mormon community of Snowflake, Arizona and is an emeritus professor of English at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in French-speaking Switzerland and Belgium from 1954 to 1957. He edited Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought from 2004 to 2008.
Benson Young Parkinson is a Latter-day Saint novelist, literary critic, and biographer. He has published two novels concerning fictional LDS missionaries, entitled The MTC: Set Apart and Into the Field, as well as a biography of S. Dilworth Young, an LDS general authority. In the mid-1990s he became involved in the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), primarily by creating an email forum for the discussion of LDS literature called AML-List, for which he was awarded the 2000 AML Award for Criticism. Parkinson then co-founded the literary journal Irreantum and served as co-editor for a year. His criticism of LDS literature has been featured in multiple publications. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University.
Mormon studies is the interdisciplinary academic study of the beliefs, practices, history and culture of individuals and denominations belonging to the Latter Day Saint movement, a religious movement associated with the Book of Mormon, though not all churches and members of the Latter Day Saint movement identify with the terms Mormon or Mormonism. Denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by far the largest, as well as the Community of Christ (CoC) and other smaller groups, include some categorized under the umbrella term Mormon fundamentalism.
The John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA) is an independent, nonprofit organization promoting study, research, and publishing about the history and culture of the Latter Day Saint movement. It is especially focused on the Community of Christ, other midwestern Restoration traditions, and early Mormonism. The Community of Christ's approach to its own history was influenced, in part, by historical problems raised and explored through JWHA publications and conferences, and those of its sister organization, the Mormon History Association. JWHA membership numbers around 400 and is open to all, fostering cooperation with LDS and non-Mormon scholars.
Irreantum is a literary journal compiled and published by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) from 1999 to 2013, with online-only publication starting in 2018. It features selections of LDS literature, including fiction, poetry, and essays, as well as criticism of those works. The journal was advertised as "the only magazine devoted to Mormon literature." In its first years of publication, Irreantum was printed quarterly; later, it was printed twice a year. A subscription to the magazine was included in an AML membership. Annual Irreantum writing contests were held, with prizes for short stories, novel excerpts, poems, and nonfiction awarded. The journal's creators, Benson Parkinson and Chris Bigelow, sought to create a publication that would become a one-stop resource where companies interested in publishing LDS literature could find the best the subculture had to offer. They also hoped Irreantum would highlight various kinds of LDS writing, balancing both liberal and traditional points of view.
Jack Aaron Harrell is an American fiction writer, essayist, and English professor at Brigham Young University–Idaho.
Phyllis Barber is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, often set in the Western United States. She was raised in Boulder City, Nevada and Las Vegas as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She studied piano at Brigham Young University and moved to Palo Alto, California where her husband studied law at Stanford. There Barber finished her degree in piano at San Jose State College in 1967, and taught and performed piano in California. She studied creative writing at the University of Utah and received an MFA in writing from Vermont College in 1984. She started her writing career by publishing short stories in journals and magazines in the 1980s.
