By David G. Pace It lies on my desk at home, an old copy of Shakespeare’s plays: its binding brittle, the pages yellowed with age. Frank gave it to me in the summer of 1981. His old house stood atop a slight hill on Grove Street Extension in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He had spent …
Category: Art and Literature
Angina: Fiction
By Helen Walker Jones After Magnum, P.I., Myrna Kaufusi walked upstairs to her bedroom. Originally designed as a maid’s room, it wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet. She pulled open her dresser drawer, found her old orange bikini, and laid it on her new quilt with its puffy, three-dimensional blocks. Watching that old …
Faith By Proxy: A Conversation with Author Brady Udall
If we exclude science fiction and vampire authors, Brady Udall is currently Mormonism’s brightest literary star. Breaking onto the scene with his short story collection Letting Loose the Hounds (1996), Udall has been characterized as a contemporary Charles Dickens. His first novel, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint (2002), tells the sprawling story of …
Poem: Fact of My Life
My job was once threatened if I published a poem. I lived in another place but in America and knew my rights. I let the poem wait. Oh, I read it aloud once and silence swelled in the room like fog; then someone said, read it again. My job was once threatened if I …
Faith and the “As If” Factor: Review of Doug Thayer’s “The Tree House”
By Levi S. Peterson At 80, Douglas Thayer goes on writing impressive fiction, as this latest novel shows. Cast in short, simple sentences and concentrating on the concrete instead of the abstract, The Tree House not only captures the rhythms of Mormon life in Provo during the mid-twentieth century but also figures forth the tensions …
Poem: In Riverdale
We returned to our beginnings in August, with its crayola green trees and grass, blue sky, and yellow light so certainly imposed that desert light and night and hues wavered within us. We settled near the mountains, opening our windows to crickets wooing a canyon breeze. We tried to believe we can fit this …
OK, Mormon: Review of Doug Thayer’s “The Tree House”
By E. George Goold Everyone familiar with Mormon letters knows Douglas Thayer. The veteran Brigham Young University English professor established himself with the landmark short story collection Under the Cottonwoods, built a long, distinguished career with novels including Summer Fire and The Conversion of Jeff Williams, and delighted audiences with his memoir, Hooligan: A Mormon …
Poem: an early elegy in lower-case
i pay my respects by saying what’s true in love and anger you served us crumbs, you see, and we hungered for our own bowls of bread and milk love your silvery chains, my sisters we did we do for they are your redemption oh it is not so simple says my …
Poem: March
By Mark Katrinak Winter will finally drift, die. Snow still upon the trees, the basement windows blurred by masks of white. Wind howls inside the mind. Without a key it crept inside and stayed. But you and I—we are not done. There’s still some meat left, tender on our bone, and we’ve not finished eating …
A Season in the Wilderness
By Larry Menlove Larry Menlove’s work has appeared in Irreantum, Dialogue, Torrey House Press, and other venues. He writes from Utah and chases the shade from one tree to the next. He is trying to shake a novel out of the maple he’s currently under. The day it began, I ate the bran muffin, …