Phyllis Barber

PHYLLIS BARBER {[email protected]} is a cyclist, hiker, editor, teacher, and award-winning author of eight books—a novel, two books of short stories, two children’s books, and a trilogy of memoirs which includes: How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir (a coming-of-age story that won the Associated Writing Program Award for Creative Nonfiction in 1991 and the Association of Mormon Letters Award in Biography in 1993); Raw Edges, a coming-of-age-in-middle-age story; and To The Mountain: One Mormon Woman’s Search for Spirit, a collection of personal essays about her twentyyear hiatus from Mormonism and experiences with a wide variety of religious persuasions. She has been inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, is the mother of four sons, and taught for the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program for nineteen years.

Articles

Honorable Mention: Butterflies

Trying to get to the nursery proper and all of the blooming plants—bright colors, heady smells, early summer at its best—Mona almost walked past his table. It was one of those fold-up numbers with foldout…

The Elegance of Belief

I may be too old, too apparently single (though I am not; I am married to a Jewish man now, who is respectful of the religion, though not interested in conversion), or too peripheral, but this talk has been given only in my thoughts. I have many speeches to give, but alas, it is now the turn of others. Thanks to Dialogue for allowing those who don’t give talks to give them here.

Prophet by the Sea

One late afternoon just before sunset, the Prophet with white hair like the mane of a lion was walking by the sea with his friend, Fernando. They walked and talked about many things as the…

Intimacy in a Three-Piece Suit | Victor L. Brown, Jr., Human Intimacy: Illusion & Reality

What is this human intimacy, this condition that human beings seek “at every stage of life .. . as urgently as we seek food and drink . . . this need so powerful that we…

Wild Sage

I sit here by my gate, sniffing the stalk of sage in my hand, and wonder about the leaves drifting down on me. They float past my eyes and settle on my folded legs. Summer…

The Whip: A Modern Folktale

Headed west, Brother and Sister Gustavson pushed their handcart for many miles singing, “Some must push and some must pull” before their miracle happened. They inherited a wagon -— all in the moment a hand…

The Mormon Woman as Writer

Once while I was wandering through my life, I had a need to say something. I’m not sure where this something came from, but opinions and observations grew on the interior walls of my mind…

Bird of Paradise

A drum was beating that night as my family and I entered the elementary school gymnasium. Animal skins were stretched across a portion of hollowed-out tree, two flat brown hands pounding on their surface. Instantly…

Dust to Dust: A Mormon Folktale

The morning promised no bright sun. No blue sky. Only dust from the desert’s chalky red soil. “Lord in heaven,” Rosalinda said to herself. She stared out the window, worried about her garden. She couldn’t…

The Precarious Walk Away from Mormonism, All the Time With a Stitch in My Side

In April 1995, just before I left for a month-long trip to Slovenia, I had a brief telephone conversation with Linda King Newell. I had been invited to speak at the annual Pilgrimage Retreat. She…

CAUTION: Men in Trees | Darrell Spencer, CAUTION: Men in Trees

CAUTION: Men in Trees. Hmmm, one might say. Are these men swaying from limb to limb like the perennial hero, Tarzan? Are these men going out on a limb or barking up the wrong tree?…

Where the Walls of the World Wear Thin | Judith Freeman, Red Water

As Red Water opens, John D. Lee, an adopted son of Brigham Young, a member of the Council of Fifty, a leader in the Host of Israel (the private militia formed by General Joseph Smith),…

Body Blue: Excerpts from a Novoir

To write is to siphon the clouds, the stars, the wind and rain through the pen. It’s like holding a root into the earth of the soul. It’s like a channel from the sun to…

Singing the Differences to Sleep | Heidi Hart, Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice

A grace note is a musical term for a miniature note placed before a prominent note in a musical phrase. If music is the direct line to human emotion, as Heidi Hart claims in her…

Writing: An Act of Responsibility

You’re a writer who loves these big, tough songs that pierce your heart and make you feel alive all over again. You believe in literature with a soul—the book that makes you think, that makes you feel as though you’ve been somewhere and experienced something, that you’re a different person for having read it. Writing just to entertain isn’t your goal. Writing to impress others with your cleverness or hoped-for-brilliance doesn’t matter as much as it once did. Your desire is something like Chekhov’s who spoke about writers describing situations so truthfully that readers could no longer avoid them. Or in your own words, to wrangle with the tough places in yourself and your subject. That’s what matters to you.

At the Cannery

By myself, I’m driving east on 1-70, just out of Denver. I’m looking for silos. I’m also listening to jazzmeister Herbie Hancock on his new tribute-to-Joni-Mitchell CD, River. You gotta love that Herbie, I’m thinking. Tina Turner’s singing “Edith and the Kingpin,” something about victims of typewriters and how the band sounds like typewriters. I laugh. I’m one of those victims who’s emerging out of my cave where I write every day to volunteer at the Aurora Cannery, a division of LDS Welfare Services.

Sinners Welcome Here (2002)

Driving past the humongous brick building set way back from the street, I do an instant double take. Did I just see what I thought I saw? Did that sign say, “Sinners Welcome Here?” While I’m supposed to be negotiating traffic on my way to Costco, I’m rubbernecking, and I see that the sign says what I thought it said. The words are painted on a shiny plastic, weatherproof banner attached near the top of the building.