Mormon Artist Magazine – A Motley Vision

Mormon Artist Magazine interview–three cut Qs & As

Mormon Artist Magazine interviewed me for their latest issue (Issue 10). You can find my interview here.

Mormon Artist Magazine Literature editor and fellow AMVer Katherine Morris suggested I post here at AMV questions and answers cut from the interview. So, for your reading pleasure:

There also seems to be an underlying theme of agency in your writing: “[I]t enables those who read or hear it to create choices for themselves”. How does the concept of agency inform your writing?

The “It” here refers to “sustainable language.” Sustainable language is creative, proactive, productive language that effectively sparks others to create their own risk-choice spectrums and generate possibilities for themselves. It’s the language of life. Sustainable language goes out on its faith in others’ creativity, creative drive being a far more commonplace phenomenon in all levels of society than is popularly supposed. Good language–sustainable language–allows for that creativity and invigorates human agency. Continue reading “Mormon Artist Magazine interview–three cut Qs & As”

Short Story Friday: Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg by James Goldberg

I like to reward work of Mormon narrative art that is well crafted AND made available for free online so I awaited the Mormon Artist Contest Issue (which my sister Katherine co-edited and my other sister Ann helped copyedit) with much anticipation. It features work by Mormon artists under the age of 30, and AMV’s own Tyler Chadwick scored an honorable mention with his poem “For the Man in the Red Jacket.”

However, to my dismay, short fiction was not to be found among any of the winners or honorable mentions — we have 3 poems, a personal essay and a short play. Certainly all well-w0rth reading (and it’s interesting how many of the works featured play with scripture in somewhat similar ways to my Speculations series and Theric’s The FOB Bible), but my core literary love is fiction, and so it was a delight to discover a bonus addition to the issue — a set of tales by special edition co-editor James Goldberg that are informed by his interesting mix of ethnic identities.

Title: Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg

Author: James Goldberg

Publication Info: Mormon Artist, Nov. 2009

Submitted by: William Morris

Why?: Wm says: “I like how Goldberg takes these three ethnic elements from his own poly-ethnic background — that is Mormon, Sikh, Jew — as well as certain elements from each of those cultures storytelling traditions and melds them together. It both legitimizes and complicates the concept of Mormon ethnicity, but setting aside all the theory — it’s a fun series of mini-tales to read.

Also: how can I not reward a mixture of humor, folk tale and parable?”

Participate:

Submit to Short Story Friday

Possible online sources of stories and link to spreadsheet with current submissions

All Short Story Friday posts so far

Mormon Artist Magazine: Interview With Ben Crowder

Mormon Artist is a new on-line magazine that is imressive in its ambitions, and even more impressive in the fact that it seems to be meeting those ambitions. This is a publication to watch. After having just released the third issue, I interviewed Mormon Artist editor and founder Ben Crowder. The magazine can be found at http://mormonartist.net/ . Although the web layout is nice, I even more highly recommend the PDF version of the magazine for its wonderful aesthetic quality. — Mahonri Stewart

Q. 1- First off, tell our readers about Mormon Artist. What is it? What are you trying to accomplish with it? What is its genesis?Mormon Artist is an online magazine about the Latter-day Saint arts world. Its core is interviews with the artists themselves, since that’s what I find most interesting, but we’re gradually expanding to include more types of content as well. I have three goals for the magazine: first, to show how much is actually happening in Mormon arts (much of which is unknown to most members); second, to encourage more and better work; and third, to help new artists get started by getting their names out there.

I suppose the birth of the magazine was at the end of June — and I’ll get to that in a moment — but its genesis started much earlier. I’d spent the previous year writing and directing plays with New Play Project, and I think it’s safe to say that if it weren’t for NPP, there would be no Mormon Artist. Working on Mormon theatre not only gave me firsthand knowledge of the workings of a volunteer-run organization (which is what Mormon Artist swiftly became) but also got me giddy about the undercurrent I was sensing — that times were changing and that Mormon arts were really starting to come into their own Continue reading “Mormon Artist Magazine: Interview With Ben Crowder”