2025 Mormon Studies Books in Review

It’s time for our annual Mormon Studies Books in Review episode, where we take stock of the most compelling non-fiction, literature, and creative works on Mormon themes published in 2025.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Dialogue book review editors Andrew Hall and Nicholas Shrum are joined by AML book review editor Andrew Hamilton to introduce and reflect on dozens of new titles spanning biography, history, diaries, fiction, poetry, memoir, graphic novels, and beyond. Together, they map the questions, tensions, and imaginative possibilities shaping Mormon studies right now.

Featured biographies include John Turner’s Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, Andrew Kimball’s The Blood in Their Veins, and Brian Q. Cannon’s Building a Global Zion. Recent historical works range from Jonathan Stapley’s Holiness to the Lord to Rosemary Avance’s Mediated Mormons and Samuel Brunson’s Between the Temple and the Tax Collector. The episode also highlights major diary publications, including Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson and The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson.

On the literary side, the editors discuss new novels and story collections by Karin Anderson, John Bennion, Stephen C. LeSeur, DJ Butler and Aaron Michael Ritchey, Henrik Sorensen, and Stephen Tuttle, alongside a rich slate of poetry—from epic works like Elias—An Epic of the Ages and Joseph: An Epic to new collections by Lance Larsen, Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, Steven L. Peck, and others.

The conversation also takes in memoir and creative nonfiction, including Dispatches from Mormon Zion, Latter-day Sikh, Wolf Act, and Desert Birthright; graphic novels by Camilla Stark and Matt Page; and notable crossover and cultural studies titles such as Dan McClellan’s The Bible Says So, Changemakers: Women Who Boldly Built Zion, and Darren Parry’s Tending the Sacred.

Whether you’re building a reading list, teaching Mormon studies, or simply curious about where the field is headed, this episode offers a panoramic view of the books shaping Mormon thought and storytelling in 2025.