SALT LAKE CITY — More than 55 works, from film to poetry to novels to comics that are by, for or about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been named finalists across 14 categories for the Association for Mormon Letters awards.
The awards will be announced the evening of Saturday, May 2, in a recorded event that will be released on its website at associationmormonletters.org/blog/ and on YouTube, replacing the canceled annual conference.
Playwright James Arrington will be honored with the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.
His plays include “Farley Family Reunion” and “The Trail of Dreams.” He also taught playwriting at Utah Valley University, where he was the chairman of the Department of Theatrical Arts for Stage and Screen.
R. A. Christmas will be honored with the AML Lifetime Achievement Award for his many years as an author and educator. He has published nine books of poetry, a collection of stories, and a songbook from his years as a singer-songwriter.
The event will include recordings of those who will honor and discuss the careers of Arrington and Christmas.
- Finalists for novels are “The Cunning Man” by D. J. Butler and Aaron Ritchey; “Irreversible Things” by Lisa Van Orman Hadley; “Maggie’s Place” by Annette Haws; “Muddy: Where Faith and Polygamy Collide” by Dean Hughes; and “The Glovemaker” by Ann Weisgarber.
- In the short fiction category, the finalists are “You Can Give Him a Kiss” by Alison Maeser Brimley; ”My Father’s Liahona” by Danny Nelson; “Bode and Iris” by Levi Peterson and “Next of Kin” by Karen Rosenbaum.
- Finalists in the young adult novel category are “Lovely War” by Julie Berry; “Let’s Call it a Doomsday” by Katie Henry, “Scars Like Wings” by Erin Stewart and “Waiting for Fitz” by Spencer Hyde.
- In the middle grade novel category, the finalists are “Out to Get You: Thirteen Tales of Weirdness and Woe” by Josh Allen, “The Red Flower” by Kate Coombs; “Words on Fire” by Jennifer A. Nielsen; and Liesl Shurtliff’s “Time Castaways No. 1: The Mona Lisa Key and “Time Castaways No. 2: The Obsidian Compass.”
- Finalists in the picture book category are: “From a Small Seed: the Story of Eliza Hamilton” by Camille Andros and Tessa Blackham; “Girls Who Choose God: Stories of Extraordinary Women from Church History” by McArthur Krishna, Bethany Brady Spalding and Kathleen Peterson; “If Monet Painted a Monster” by Amy Newbold and Greg Newbold; and “Lola Dutch: When I Grow Up” by Kenneth Wright and Sarah Jane Wright.
- In the drama category, the finalists are “Tales of Tila” by Carolyn Chatwin Murset; “Project X” by Taylor Hatch; and “Bitter Lemon” by Melissa Leilani Larson.
- Finalists in the narrative feature film category are “The Fighting Preacher” directed by T.C. Christensen; “The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith” directed by Mitch Davis; and “Out of Liberty” directed by Garrett Batty.
- In the documentary feature film category, the finalists are “After Selma” directed by Loki Mulholland; “The Jets: Making it Real” directed by Kels Goodman; and “Jimmer: The Lonely Master” directed by Scott Christopherson.
- Finalists in the short films category are “Father of Man” directed by Barrett Burgin; “Paper Trails” directed by Heather Moser; “Stickup Kid” directed by Daniel Tu and ”Man and Kin” directed by Max Johnson.
- In the poetry category, the finalists are “Into the Sun: Poems Revised, Rearranged, and New” by Colin Douglas; “After Earth” by Michael Lavers; “The Tree at the Center” by Kathryn Knight Sonntag; “The Marriage of the Moon and the Field” by Sunni Brown Wilkinson; and “Homespun and Angel Feathers” by Darlene Young.
- Finalists in the criticism category are “Danites, Damsels, and World Domination: Mormons in the Dime Novels” by Michael Austin; ”Poetic Representations of Mormon Women in Late Nineteenth-Century Frontier America” by Amy Easton-Flake; “Wrestling with God: Invoking Scriptural Mythos in LDS Literary Work” by James Goldberg ; “Mormons, Musical Theatre, and Belonging in America” by Jake Johnson; and “Latter-day Screens: Gender, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism” by Brenda R. Weber.
- In the creative nonfiction category, the finalists are “Remember the Revolution: Mormon Essays and Stories” by James Goldberg; “A New Constellation: A Memoir” by Ashley Mae Hoiland; and “Crossings: A Bald Asian-American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar’s Ventures through Life, Death, Cancer and Motherhood” by Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye.
- Finalists in the religious nonfiction category are “A Place to Belong: Reflections from Modern Latter-day Saint Women” edited by Hollie Rhees Fluhman and Camille Fronk Olson; “If Truth Were a Child: Essays” by George B. Handley; and “The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church” by Jana Riess.
- In the comics category, the finalists are “Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive” by Michael Allred, Lee Allred, Rich Tommaso and Laura Allred; “That’s One Small Step for a Mom, One Giant Leap for a Missionary” by Kevin Beckstrom; “Best Friends” by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham; and “Super Elders & the Rise of Legion” by Matt Vroom.
For information, see associationmormonletters.org/blog/.