Knot Theory
May 30, 2023A knot can be a beautiful thing. A knot can reveal truths about how the world works. Some people are so enraptured by knots, they dedicate their lives to studying them. I’m devoting no energy…
DiaBLOGue
Truth and Reconciliation: Reflections on the Fortieth Anniversary of the LDS Church’s Lifting the Priesthood and Temple Restrictions for Black Mormons of African Descent
May 30, 2023Listen to the audio version of this piece here. The Church has no power to do wrong with impunity any more than any individual. Brigham Young[1] America’s history of racial inequality continues to haunt us.…
“My Indignation Has Got the Better of My Intention”: A Case Study in Latter-day Saint and “Gentile” Female Family Correspondence in Nineteenth-Century America
May 30, 2023Listen to the audio version of this piece here. Although members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shared many values with their Christian neighbors, the differences between Mormons and non-Mormons during the…
“Fast from that Which is Not Perfect”: Food Abstinence and Fasting Cures in the Kingdom of God
May 30, 2023Listen to the audio version of this piece here. Content warning: This article contains references to disordered eating and bodily harm. Orlean Beginning in March 1935, Orlean Kingston documented her rigorous fasts and visionary experiences…
Collect for a Family Friend Killed in a Sabbath Morning House Fire
April 5, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. O, preening angels, voyeursof bright and burning things, of underbuilding flare-ups andflaming caved-in tinder, whose breathing—plumed, infernal,unforgiving—sweltered her last daybreak with unholy invocation—Please, if mercy be,…
Earthen Lavers Tyler Chadwick, Litany with WingsScott Hales, Hemingway in Paradiseand Other Mormon PoemsElizabeth Pinborough, The Brain’s Lectionary:Psalms and Observations
April 5, 2023A few years ago, William Logan wrote, “Poetry has long been a major art with a minor audience.”[1] We could more accurately call it a major art with many minor audiences grouped, like the poets,…
A Very Bad Dog Steven L. Peck, Heike’s Void
April 5, 2023Among the benefits to reading authors with large, proven oeuvres is trust. We can trust Steven L. Peck. Remember that through the provocations of the opening of his astonishing new release from BCC Press, a…
Abstraction in Latter-day Saint Art: An Interview with Chase Westfall
April 5, 2023MOH: In official LDS Church materials, from magazines to manuals to temple walls, there’s a lack of abstract art, in favor of highly representational, literal art. What is the role of abstraction in religious art,…
Sodom and Gomorrah
April 5, 2023Listen to the interview about this piece here. Listen to the audio version of this piece here. A man stands naked on the rubber of a checkout counter’s clnveyer belt, face smeared with something red.…
Joseph Smith and the Possibility of Comics Andrew Knaupp and Sal Velluto, Pillar of Light Mark Elwood, The Glass Looker Noah Van Sciver, Joseph Smith and the Mormons
April 5, 2023Renaissance scholar Ada Palmer estimates we know 1 percent of what happened five hundred years ago and that two-thirds of what we know is wrong. I have no reason to doubt her expertise—and every reason…