A positive review of No Going Back was published in today’s issue of The Daily Utah Chronicle, the newspaper of the University of Utah.
Review of No Going Back in U of U Paper
March 10th, 2010The Amateur Nature of Mormon Letters
March 10th, 2010Cross-posted from the AML blog.
There’s a certain sense of validation, in our commercial culture, that comes with being paid for one’s work. This is at least as true in literature as elsewhere. Anyone (or so the thinking goes) can write a novel. The real test is whether you can get someone (not yourself) to pay money to publish it.
Thoughts on Kushner, Angels in America
February 25th, 2010Several years ago, prompted by a non-Mormon friend, I read Angels in America, a set of two plays set in New York City in the mid-1980s, written and performed in the early 1990s, that won multiple awards (including a Pulitzer). The play is largely about homosexuality, AIDS, and political conservatism. Several of the characters are Mormons, though Tony Kushner (the playwright) is not.
My reaction (which I initially posted on AML-List, and which was later published in more polished and expanded form in Irreantum, the journal of the Association for Mormon Letters) was that despite the Mormon characters and some Mormon iconic symbology, I didn’t really feel that the play was about Mormons or Mormonism in any meaningful way. At the time I wrote my reaction (2003), that was a perspective I didn’t see reflected or even much addressed in discussions of the work — bafflingly so, considering that 3 out of 9 main characters are supposedly Mormon.
So I wrote my response, which I’ve decided to repost below, in the hopes that perhaps this will prompt a little more discussion or at least awareness on this issue.
Branching Out
February 14th, 2010News regarding my book has slowed, and it’s kind of boring to talk about the same topic all the time anyway. So I’m planning to start branching out. Sure, I’ll still include news about No Going Back, but I also plan to fill my once- or twice-weekly blogs with other topics as well, including writing in general, my own writing projects, Mormon literature, etc. Stay tuned!
No Going Back Whitney Award Finalist
February 5th, 2010I am extremely pleased to announce that No Going Back is a finalist in the Best General Fiction category for the Whitney Awards, an awards program for novels by LDS authors.
Positive Review at A Motley Vision
February 4th, 2010Earlier today, a positive review of No Going Back was posted at A Motley Vision: Mormon Arts and Culture blog. That’s one of the blogs where I hang out, so the positive response is particularly gratifying.
NGB Article in BYU Daily Universe
January 20th, 2010On January 19, 2010, the Daily Universe, BYU’s student newspaper, ran a feature article on No Going Back that made the paper’s front page, sharing headlines with Haiti. They’d interviewed me the week before, and apparently also contacted Rex Goode, whose discussions on AML-List helped spark my initial ideas for the story, and Steve Walker, my old BYU English professor who read and endorsed the book in glowing terms.
The Writing Rookie #11: Overcoming Fear
January 13th, 2010This column is cross-posted from A Motley Vision website. For the complete list of columns in this series, click here.
Fear is, I’ve come to realize, one of my great personal enemies as a creative writer (along with laziness). Part of this is probably just because of the kind of person I am. I suspect, though, that part of it may be endemic to the writing process.
Positive Review by Danyelle Ferguson
January 8th, 2010LDS author, editor, reviewer (and mom) Danyelle Ferguson was reluctant to look at No Going Back for a variety of reasons, but when it came up for consideration for shortlisting in the Whitney Awards category for which she’s a committee member, she felt she had to give it a chance.
Annette Lyon: NGB Avoids “Didactic Landmine”
January 18th, 2010I was reading a post over at the AML blog by Annette Lyon, an author of six LDS novels, when I started to get nervous. She was talking about the importance of not writing didactically, where the message drives the story. I was wondering what she would think of my novel, when I encountered the following:
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Tags: Annette Lyon, Association for Mormon Letters, blogging, Jonathan Langford, Mormon, No Going Back, preachiness, reader comments, realism, Reviews of No Going Back, writing process
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