AML Session: Marilyn Brown

Marilyn Brown: "Bones and Buns: Growing the Body of Mormon Literature"

(Should've taken her pic to include, but didn't: my bad)

Off-the-cuff, shares her experiences with woman Mormon writers

Drawing connections: bones, muscles connected with tendons, metaphor for her presentation

George Eliot, Adam Bead (?) read by MB as a ten-year-old: thought, This is the kind of book I want Mormons to write, but where is it? Wrote first novel in a 100 page notebook

Read Nephi Anderson, Maureen Whipple: okay, but not the best that could be done.

Mormon audience rejected Whipple because "we knew better"

Wanted inspiring Mormon lit: that portrays us in a positive light?

(Veda Hale: biography of MW abt to be published)

MB did not want to be like Maureen: "good Mormon girl that I am"

Virginia Sorensen: another writer she admired: "I liked Virginia Sorensen, but she still wasn't what I wanted"—something really Mormon

Then Clinton Larson then Carol Lynn Pearson (Beginnings)
MB published Rain Flowers then Head/Heart book w/Elaine someone (on own printing press)

Doug Thayer and Doug Marshall: thought, Finally here we have truly Mormon writers

Considers Wallace Stegner: wrote abt Mormons, but as an outsider, and I could tell (couldn't you?)

Continued her impossible dream
Wrote book; almost published in NY; reworked now, made it "more Mormon"

Then another prize winner in UT that Mormons wouldn't buy

Then Earthkeepers

Mentions Brady Udall, likes what he did; various YA writers

Still waiting for the national Mormon literary novel

What abt a best selling woman artist from DB?

Arianne Cope, John Bennion, Todd Petersen, (good novel, despite dead space in the middle), Jeanine Justin (sister of Linda Sillitoe), Marilyn Arnold, Levi Petersen (just not happy with his Mormonism)

Lance Larsen is good

Anybody who's successful I bow at your feet! (Mentions Tolkien's success at 74: she's 73, says there's still hope)

(Notes taken on my iPhone Notes app during the session.)


- Tyler-at-large: chasing clouds, blogging live