By Michael Farnworth This is the first of a series of columns dedicated to understanding and improving the dynamics of Mormon families. My premise is that we suffer from an exaggerated case of lip service and don’t actually afford the family as much devotion as we claim. Sure, in our church meetings, we talk …
Category: Columns
Update: Issue 161
Hey, Dude, I’m a Mormon A professional surfer happily guides her board over Pacific waves. A couple handles important affairs at the Washington D.C.-based companies they work for. A young man describes his love for professional skateboarding and tries fancy tricks on his board. These are three of the slick, urban, fast-paced stories included in …
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 …
Making Ourselves Visible: A Conversation with Author Johnny Townsend
If you’ve been reading Sunstone and Dialogue for the past five years, you’ve run across multiple examples of Johnny Townsend’s work. One of Mormonism’s most prolific short story writers, he is constantly putting out fiction that is, as D. Michael Quinn puts it, simultaneously “insightful, insulting, quirky-faithful, and funny.” Townsend grew up in New …
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 …
Gratitude: A Contagious Choice
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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 …
Braving the Borderlands: Conducting a Self-assessment
Know thyself. —Greek Aphorism To thine own self be true, and [you cannot] be false to any man. —Shakespeare At the 2010 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium (Session 124, 5 August SL10124), John Dehlin and I hosted a spirited discussion with about a hundred attendees about their individual Borderlander experiences. We primed the discussion with …