The modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is awash with mainstreaming. Becoming a god of your own planet (or universe), Heavenly Mother, even the name “Mormonism” — anything that might make Mormons look weird to Evangelical Christians — gets ignored out of existence. I’ll admit that a lot…
Category: Literature
Server maintenance
I am in the process of upgrading the server for this site and its sister sites (MAA Books, Outer Blogness, and ExMormon). There will probably be some downtime *** ETA: It appears that the server migration was successful. Please comment (or email me at chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot…
America’s Greatest Mystery Novel
Once you strip away all the Book of Mormon’s pretenses of scriptural import, what you have is nothing more nor less than a lusty tale of America’s favorite subject: families and murder…. Murder and ruin are written across the breadth of Joseph Smith’s pre-American panorama, and because violence always demands…
Call for Submissions
Mormon Alumni Association Books is seeking LDS-themed novels in all categories, including literary, commercial, and genre fiction. We will also consider short fiction and poetry collections. We are looking for completed manuscripts that explore the unique Mormon experience. Works may be critical of or sympathetic to the LDS Church and…
Mormon Erotica, Mormon Romance
Mormon Erotica, the new novel from Donna Banta, is a joyous page-turner that, despite the title, is far more concerned with love and romance than sex. While the book contains plenty of reflection on Mormon attitudes toward sex and marriage, the action depicted is strictly PG. As with so many…
The latest from the marvelous pen of Johnny Townsend!
If you like short stories and you’re interested in the lives of Mormons, you should be following the work of Johnny Townsend. Since he writes from an ex-Mormon perspective, believers often dismiss Townsend’s work as biased — or as a priori “an attack on the church” — but I think…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Response edition
The big news this week is that Kate Kelly has appealed her excommunication. In her appeal, Kate wrote: I am, and have always been, a faithful Mormon. My only “sin†elucidated by you has been speaking my mind and pushing for gender equality in the Church. Far from being wrong,…
No longer invisible: Latter-Gay Saints
They try to convince gay people that it’s in their best interests to be straight. In fact, they try to convince them that they’re already straight. (from “Ockham’s Razor”) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a gay problem. Specifically, the church has a plan for how to…
Mormon Alumni Association Books!
Faith-promoting LDS books have a whole publishing-and-distribution network in Deseret Books (plus Seagull and others) — not to mention Mormon literature organizations and a ready-made audience in LDS wards around the world who’d like to help Orson Whitney’s prediction “We will yet have Miltons and Shakspeares of our own” come…
Reclaiming our stories, redux!
Remember my discussion on reclaiming our stories? About how we should take every opportunity to tell our own experiences, instead of standing by and letting the church invent the “apostate†narrative, according to its own agenda…? Well there are some natural conflicts when it comes to being sure that your…