THANK YOU to everyone who submitted work to the Mormon Lit Blitz Contest. We received roughly 200 submissions in many different forms and styles, and about as many different topics. Having read through a significant portion of the submissions as a member of the judging panel, I was impressed by the sheer conceptual imagination of the writers. You took various elements of Mormon life and approached them in ways that helped me see them anew, that gave dimension and weight to your experiences, values, and dilemmas. It made judging both enjoyable, because we got to read so much engaging work, and difficult–because we were supposed to turn a list of 200 into a list of 20-30.

We almost made it. We’re down to 32.

Between now and Wednesday, we’ll be introducing eight semi-finalists a day. You can catch a new title and teaser on Facebook or Twitter every few hours, or else wait and read about the featured semi-finalists on this blog at night. Only 12 of the 32 semi-finalists will go on to be featured as contest finalists and vie for your votes and the prize Kindle, but I think even the short descriptions of the semi-finalists will be a testament to the range of ways in which Mormon faith and creativity can intersect.

Thanks again to everyone who submitted. And enjoy the coming sneak peek at the fruits of the Mormon Lit Blitz Contest.

James Goldberg
Contest Co-Coordinator

Mormon Artist is pleased to announce a new collaborative project: the Mormon Lit Blitz contest. The project was conceived by James Goldberg and Scott Hales and will be hosted here on the Mormon Artist blog (check back regularly for updates). Send up to three submissions of 1,000 words or less to mormonlitblitz@gmail.com by January 15, 2012 and you may win a Kindle.

Contest Call for Submissions

What we want: Short work for Mormons to be published and read online.

The details:
“Short” means under 1,000 words.

“Work” means creative writing in any genre, from literary realism to far future science fiction, and in any form: fiction, essay, poetry, even play or screenplay if you can keep it under 1,000 words. Give us a tiny, polished gem we can show off to people who love Mormonism and love great writing but  “know not where to find” a place where the two meet.

“For Mormons” means for committed Latter-day Saints. Yes, that’s an extremely diverse audience (see the “I’m a Mormon” campaign–and your ward members), but it’s also an audience with distinctive shared values and history that don’t often get attention in creative work. We want you to write something that will appeal to us as people who believe in the sacred, who have ridiculous numbers of brothers and sisters we see every week, who worry about being good and faithful servants no matter what our day jobs are and wonder what it will be like to meet our grandparents’ grandparents in heaven. We don’t need your pieces to preach to us. We do need them to combine your creativity and religious commitment in a way that excites us and gives us something cool to talk about with our Mormon friends.

“To be published and read online” means we’re going to post six to twelve finalists’ pieces on the Mormon Artist blog and then ask readers to vote on their favorites.

One catch: since even 1,000 words can be intimidating on a screen, your piece needs a strong hook of no more than 120 words (or eight lines for poetry) to be visible on the main blog page. Mark the end of your hook with [MORE]. Even our editors will only read further if you’ve piqued their interest.

Submission Guidelines:
Submissions must have fewer than 1,000 words with a hook no longer than 120 words (or eight lines for poetry). Submissions must be engaging to Latter-day Saints and engage with their Mormon identity in some way.

Authors may submit up to three works. Each submission must be attached to an email as a .doc or .pdf file. The selection process is blind, so the author’s name should not appear on the document.

Email any questions and your submissions to mormonlitblitz@gmail.com. Submission emails should contain the author’s name, the titles of each submission, and contact information (telephone number or email address).

By submitting, authors give us the one-time rights to publish their work electronically. Previously published work is OK if you still have the rights to the piece and if it meets the above contest requirements (don’t forget to add a [MORE] tag to the end of your hook).

The prize:
The contest editors will select six to twelve finalists. All finalists will have their short works published online starting in mid-February 2012 and actively promoted across the LDS blogosphere by the Mormon Lit Blitz team.

After all pieces have been published, readers will vote on a single Grand Prize Winner, who will receive a Kindle pre-loaded with LDS literary works, including Parley P. Pratt’s classic short “A Dialogue Between Joseph Smith and the Devil,” Peculiar Pages’ recent Monsters & Mormons anthology, Zarahemla Books’ Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction, the poetry anthology Fire in the Pasture, and recent issues of Mormon Artist magazine.

We got a nice mention in the New York Times yesterday:

Plenty of the MagCloud efforts are vanity projects or high-end brochures, but many others are surprisingly interesting, gorgeous, niche magazines — Mormon Artist, San Louie, Stranded, to name a few — that would not look out of place at Barnes & Noble.

Joan Merrell is putting together a conference for LDS visual artists (which is a great idea):

Inspired by CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts), several Mormon visual artists are gathering people interested in the shared learning and encouragement that can come when like-minded people collaborate. We plan to hold periodic conferences where we will discuss topics relevant to today’s visual artists, and we also hope to use the group as a springboard to create and share exhibits. By opening the group to experts and amateurs alike, we hope that this group will provide a fresh outlook for artists in the LDS community.

This is a call to any interested visual artists (painters, sculptors, photographers, textile, ceramic, and calligraphic artists, etc.) to email ldsvisualarts@gmail.com or go to the Facebook group page, LDS Visual Arts, and help start something wonderful!

From the Association for Mormon Letters:

AML is pleased to announce that Margaret Blair Young has taken office as the new AML President, with J. Scott Bronson as President-Elect. Boyd Petersen, last year’s president, will now serve a term as Past President. Other new members of the board are Phillip Snyder and Charles Swift. James Goldberg and Eric Samuelsen will continue on the board. Lynn Bronson has accepted the position as Treasurer, and Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury has a new title, Membership Secretary. Jacob Profitt continues to serve as webmaster and Darlene Young as secretary.

The 2009 AML Awards were also presented at the AML Annual Meeting at Utah Valley University on 27 February 2010.
 
Drama    
Melissa Leilani Larson for Little Happy Secrets
   
Film    
Jed Wells for Fire Creek
   
Honorary Lifetime Membership    
James D’Arc
   
Humor    
Elna Baker for The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance
   
Memoir    
Kathryn Lynard Soper for The Year My Son and I Were Born
   
Novel    
Todd Robert Petersen for Rift
   
Novel Honorable Mention    
Jamie Ford for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
   
Online Writing    
Sandra Tayler for One Cobble at a Time
   
Poetry    
Lance Larsen for Backyard Alchemy
   
Publishing    
Christopher Bigelow for Zarahemla Books
   
Service to AML
Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
   
Short Fiction    
Larry Menlove for "Path of Antelope, Pelican, and Moon"
   
Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters    
Levi Peterson
   
Young Adult Literature    
Carol Lynch Williams for The Chosen One
 
The citations for the awards can be read on the AML website at http://www.mormonletters.org/Awards/Year.aspx?year=2009

Just follow the links to each award page.

As Mormon Artist expands, we’ve realized we need a few more volunteer editors to help manage things. Here’s what we’re looking for:

Photography Editor. The photo editor’s main responsibilities will be (a) working with our photographers to get interviewee photos for articles and (b) gathering artwork to accompany articles. They’ll need to have a good eye and be somewhat tech-savvy as far as image resolution and formats go.

Assistant Editor. The assistant editor will help our four section editors whenever they need assistance. Typical responsibilities will include (a) editing articles and (b) communicating with interviewers, writers, and other volunteers.

If you’re interested, email editor at mormonartist dot net.

Covenant Communications’s new CD, Forever Yours, features love songs from thirteen different LDS artists, and makes for a great Valentine’s Day purchase. The CD, boasting to “Say ‘I love you’ fifteen different ways,” lives up to its claims, offering a little something for everyone.

With fifteen tracks, Forever Yours features a variety of musical genres and styles that pay equal attention to love in all its happy stages. The first six tracks are peppy and carefree, with a “windows down, summer drive, pure fun” kind of feeling. Tracks seven through eleven address romance more seriously and intimately. The final four tracks on the CD round out our romantic evolution with four narrative songs, many of which allude to love’s “bigger picture.”

Some artists on the CD sound remarkably similar to certain big names in the music industry, while others have their own unique sounds. Regardless of sound or style, the talent is undeniable across the board.

Personal favorites include Debra Fotheringham’s classy “You are Truth;” Joshua Creek’s genuine “I Saw It All;” and above all, Alex Boyé’s “Happy Daze” — which alone merits the CD’s purchase.

As with any CD, not all tracks are created equal, but Forever Yours provides a nice balance, and “whether you are looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift or something to warm a heart,” you’re likely to find a track on Forever Yours that both suits your personal style and brings a smile to your face.

For more information visit the Covenant Communications website.

Melted Hearts screened at the 2010 LDS Film Festival on Friday, January 22 to a packed theater and an enthusiastic audience. The film is about a pair of missionaries, Elder Pedro Rodriguez and Elder Brian Lauper, who have trouble getting along at first. Brian is upset at having been released from his calling as an Assistant to the President, and Pedro has a grudge against Brian because he's American. After they go through some trials together and Brian saves Pedro's life when he gets seriously ill, the two become friends and keep in touch after their missions have ended. In the second half of the film, Brian and his family take a vacation to Mexico, where they meet Pedro, who falls in love with Brian's sister, Wendy. Pedro doesn't have the courage to tell Wendy before she goes back home to Provo, but with the encouragement of his family, he takes heart and hitchhikes from Mexico City to Utah to find her and confess his love.

Melted Hearts is a heart-warming story about gaining courage to follow one's dreams–a story inspired by director Jorge Ramirez Rivera's own experience as a young man of setting off to the United States to pursue an education, against all odds. Even with an inspiring story, however, the film has some flaws. There were several times while watching Melted Hearts that I had to suspend my disbelief. Due to budget and casting concerns, the two missionaries had longish hair, and the actor who played the American Elder Brian Lauper was not a native speaker of English. I was also left wondering how Pedro made it across the border into the United States when he didn't have time to arrange a visa. Many of these concerns in addition to others I had (the plot could have been tighter, the production quality wasn't as high as I was hoping, and some of the errors in the subtitles were distracting) were diminished, though, by the sheer enjoyment of seeing an international, fully subtitled Mormon film–and being in an audience of mixed native English and native Spanish speakers who were all able to fully participate as audience members. The film is half in English and half in Spanish, with both parts subtitled. The cast and crew included English speakers, Spanish speakers, and quite a few bilinguals, which provided an interesting challenge for all involved. In the Q&A after the screening, Jorge Ramirez Rivera said that he believed Melted Hearts is the first international Mormon film. He is hoping to distribute the film on DVD and possibly on some Latin websites. There were other films screened at the LDS Film Festival this year that had foreign flair, in particular Dave Boyle's films Big Dreams Little Tokyo and White on Rice, which I hope mark a new trend in LDS cinema. Jorge Ramirez Rivera's offering is an important step forward in that trend.

The following is a review written by Davey Morrison of Mormons and Masons, one of the entries in this year’s LDS Film Festival. It was originally posted here.

Mormons and Masons was the first film I saw at the LDS Film Festival, in a special screening Thursday afternoon. It’s one of a series of book-DVD combos Covenant Communications has been putting out over the past few years (I worked on a couple earlier ones: Presidents and Prophets and Love Letters of Joseph and Emma)–an idea is pitched, a book is written, and then a documentary is put together in a few weeks (in the case of Mormons and Masons, three) from some interviews with scholars and archival material. Taken on its own terms, Mormons and Masons has a lot of very fascinating and definitely worthwhile information, even if it’s not always riveting (it’s essentially 60 minutes of five or so talking heads, with an occasional photograph or drawing), and sometimes feels like it’s probably a slightly watered-down version of the book, a bid padded out with pop Mormon feelgoodery to appease the Deseret Book crowd (including a wall-to-wall needle-drop score). Still, Covenant is to be commended for taking what have mostly been scholarly issues of Mormon studies and making them more accessible to a fairly conservative Mormon lay-audience.

By its very nature, Mormons and Masons doesn’t really get to look at many of the interesting specifics of the titular subject matter–the similarities between Mormonism and Masonry are essentially in their most sacred ceremonies, in temple work for Mormons, and, for Masons, the rituals in the Masonic Lodge, both of which are held sacred, and both of which are rarely discussed in other settings. As a result, much of the discussion here is reduced to vagaries, which is in some senses disappointing on a scholarly level, but also, of course, necessary out of respect for both Mormons and Masons. Still, there’s lots that can be talked about on the subject. The film does a lot to put into context Joseph Smith’s Masonry–he and a number of other church leaders joined the Masons in Nauvoo, after hundreds of Latter-day Saints had already joined and a Lodge had already been established; he was a Mason “at sight” (i.e., he was given the honor of Master Mason in an abbreviated amount of time). The film also talked about how Joseph Smith became a Mason in between his revelation concerning the temple endowment ceremony and the first actual endowment ceremonies that took place in Nauvoo, suggesting that Smith used his and many of the Saints’ Masonic background as a way of organizing the material that would be a part of the endowment ceremony, including similarities in “symbols and tokens” and in ritual clothing. Mormons and Masonsalso points out that Masonry was hardly considered strange in the 19th century–many public figures, including almost all the presidents through the early 20th century–became Masons.

Bottom Line: If you’re looking for an interesting Film-with-an-upper-case-F, look elsewhere, but if, like me, you’re interested in the issue of Mormonism and Masonry and haven’t done a whole lot more than spend a couple hours on the internet looking into it, this is more than worth your time.

You can buy the Mormons and Masons DVD, Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons, the book by Matthew B. Brown that was the basis for the film, or a movie-book combo at Covenant Communications’ website.

We’re helping get the word out about Arx Poetica, a new social network for artists. Here’s an introduction from its founder, Robert Hall:

Arx Poetica is a newly-built social networking hub aspiring to help artists get better connected online, along with a few other lofty goals. The endeavor is strictly unaffiliated (read: it’s not just for the LDS community), but the founders behind Arx Poetica are primarily LDS and hope to raise the bar for artists and art appreciators by the very nature of the enterprise. From the website:

“We want to shine a little light on the world. Arx Poetica believes in the strange notions that everyone has a story to tell — in song, dance, word, or play — that the human soul is the most sublime creative factory, and that art and creativity constitute the bulwark of the goodness of humanity.”

The website (http://arxpoetica.com) outlines more of the founders’ aspirations — which isn’t immediately obvious to navigate, as one needs to click the main image on the home page to find out a little bit more — but it is apparent from the design that art is the dominant virtue of the enterprise. While the site has been online for over half a year, the founders feel sufficiently satisfied with its “beta” status to kick into a grassroots-style marketing effort, including a call for help (see the site’s blog).

While Arx Poetica promises to deliver on some not-yet-available features, it is clear from the outset that many tools are immediately available, and, if anything, networking with other artists online toward a good cause is not only viable, but viable now.