Modern Mormon Men: Bad Press and the Conversations We're Not Having

I have a post up on Modern Mormon Men today. It is called "Bad Press and the Conversations We're Not Having." In the last paragraph I touch on Mormon literature's potential to get important conversations going among Mormons about topics we tend to avoid whenever possible. I recommend checking it out and joining in on the conversation. Also worth reading is Mahonri Stewart's post "The New Mormon Faithful," which went up on Dawning of a Brighter Day yesterday. I think the two posts are involved in the same kind of dialogue.

Also, in other news, my creative work will appear sometime in the future on Everyday Mormon Writer. I think I've mentioned before that I used to dabble in creative writing before graduate school, but gave it up when my degrees began to severely limit the time I could dedicate to it. Anyway, I caught the bug again during the Mormon Lit Blitz and decided to try my hand at short form fiction. One of the results, "Album," will appear on EMW, and I'm interested to read your reactions to it.

Finally, I should say that I've finalized my list of Mormon stories for my class "American Religious Landscapes." Here they are:

• "Brothers"--Levi Peterson
• "Wolves"--Douglas Thayer
• "Blood Work"--Darrell Spencer
• "Clothing Esther"--Lisa Torcasso Downing (you convinced me...)
• "Thanksgiving"--Angela Hallstrom
• "Quietly"--Todd Robert Petersen

This list has changed slightly from previous lists I've posted; the biggest change has been the addition of "Quietly," which I initially kept off the list because it does not take place in America. After some thought, though, I decided that using the story would be a good way to challenge narrow definitions of "American" landscapes.  So much of the story, after all, explores the main character's ambivalent relationship with the American "landscapes" of his religion. Besides, I'm too big of a Petersen fan to pass on teaching it.