Several Items

March 5, 2005--Karamesines Wins Best Novel Award
- At the recent annual meetings of the Association for Mormon
Letters, P. G. Karamesines won Best Novel Award for her recent book,
The Pictograph Murders, published by Signature Books. Congratulations,
Patty! The Best Young Adult Novel Award went to Shannon Hale for Enna
Burning, Best Poetry Award to John Talbot for Well-Tempered Tantrum,
and Best Film Award to Adam Abel and Ryan Little for Saints and
Soldiers. Special Awards were also given to Meridian Magazine for Arts
Criticism and to the Marriott Library for its digitized collection of
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.

- May 24-29, 2005--Vermont MHA Conference in Celebration of Joseph
Smith's Birth.

- The Mormon History Association this year will meet in Killington,
Vermont, in honor of the bicentennial of the birth of Joseph Smith in
nearby Sharon. There will also be tours of Fort Ticonderoga, the
Shelburne Museum, Plymouth, Salem, Lexington/Concord and Boston.

Among the featured speakers are: Charles L. Cohen, Professor of
History at the University of Wisconsin Madison and author of God's
Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (addressing
"The Importance of Old Testament and Jewish Imagery in the
Construction of Mormon Self-Identity"); J. Kevin Graffagnino, director
of the Vermont Historical Society and author of Ethan Allen and His
Kin ("The Smith Family in Vermont"); and Richard L. Bushman, Professor
of History Emeritus at Columbia University and author of Joseph Smith
and the Beginnings of Mormonism ("The Inner Joseph Smith").

- Research papers will be read by Ugo A. Perego of the Sorenson
Molecular Genealogy Foundation ("Reconstructing Joseph Smith's Y
Chromosome"); Jeffery O. Johnson of the LDS Church History Library
("Evan Stephens in Gotham"); Matthew Bowman of Georgetown University
("David Patten's Cain and the Conception of Evil in LDS Folklore");
Alan Morrell of the University of Utah ("The Bear Lake Monster in
Nineteenth-Century Utah"); J. Taylor Hollist of SUNY ("Susquehanna
River Folk Tales"); Jennifer Reeder of New York University ("LDS
Women's Rhetoric in Shaping the Memory of Joseph Smith"); Richard O.
Cowan of Brigham Young University ("Boston's Impact on LDS Temple
Building"); S. J. Wolfe of the American Antiquarian Society ("The
Mormon Mummies"); Mark Ashurst-McGee of Arizona State University
("What Made a Stone a Seer Stone?"); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich of Harvard
University ("Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism");
William D. Russell of Graceland University, "Homosexuals in the
Church: The RLDS Experience"; Richard Bennett of Brigham Young
University ("The Nauvoo Legion within the American Militia Setting");
Josh Probert of Yale University ("The Iconography of Joseph Smith");
and many more.

- Sessions for this year's AML conference will be held at the Salt
Lake Public Library, on-site registration beginning at 8:30 am. Topics
include LDS women's book clubs, poetry, folklore, and Mormon films,
including a screening of the Best Mormon Shorts from the recent
competition (24-hour film-making marathon) on the topic of
"tolerance." Some of the more specific topics to be addressed by
presenters include "The Sensuous and Sensitive in LDS Art" by Gideon
Burton; "Rites of Passage in the Fiction of Virginia Sorensen" by Matt
Easton; "Distilling Anne Sexton: Toward a Mormon Poetic Aesthetic" by
Steven Woodward; "High Button Shoes: A Study in Popular Personal Essay
and Mormon Sentimental Literature" by Lisa Bernotski Johnson; film
criticism of "The Singles Ward, The R.M., and The Home Teachers:
Intertextual and Goofball Comedy in Halestorm Films" by Meg Singley;
"Recuperating a Critical Text: Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage"
by Gae Lyn Henderson; and the folklore