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In this episode of Dialogue Out Loud, Dialogue fiction co-editors Ryan Shoemaker and Joe Plicka speak with writer Charity Shumway about her short story “The First Letter She Found,” published in the Fall 2025 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Framed as a letter from a mother to her teenage daughter, the story traces questions of faith, embodiment, love, and the quiet costs of self-surrender across a life.
Their conversation explores the craft and stakes of writing Mormon letters: why epistolary forms are especially suited to stories of belief and silence, and how Mormon language and ritual shape narrative voice. Shumway reflects on the personal and literary origins of the piece, the challenges of writing for readers who may be unfamiliar with LDS culture, and the risks and rewards of leaving things unfinished on the page.
Together, they also discuss the difficulty of writing about faith journeys marked by doubt, ambivalence, and loss—particularly the loss of identity that can accompany leaving a faith community for love. The episode considers how literature can hold unresolved tension with honesty, allowing devotion and grief, certainty and uncertainty, to exist side by side.
Dialogue Out Loud features conversations with writers whose work appears in Dialogue, offering listeners deeper insight into contemporary Mormon literature and the creative processes behind it.