Young LDS filmmaker Luis Fernando Puente discusses the premiere of his short film, I Have No Tears, and I Must Cry, at the  Sundance Film Festival 2023. It is a personal film based on his own experience as an immigrant to the U.S. from Mexico.

Music for the episode is taken from the short film score, composed by Jorge Murcia.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Author and Mormon literature influencer William Morris talks about his new book, The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories, and describes his approach to writing fiction with examples from his collection of short stories published by By Common Consent Press. Morris is also the incoming president of The Association for Mormon Letters. In the podcast he outlines some of his plans and priorities regarding the organization, which is the primary institution for LDS authors today.

Music of the episode: "Christmas Soundscapes 7" by Steven Ricks.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Aaron Johnston and Kelly Loosli, creators of the new animated series, Saving Me, describe the sci-fi show--an old man who manages to return to his 11-year-old self and redeem him. This is the first animated series for  BYUtv, and the bestselling author and award-winning animator discuss the process of translating words on a page to animation on a screen.

With the theme song for Saving Me written and performed by The National Parks.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Joël René Scoville is a current participant in the legendary training ground for musical theater writing, the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in New York. In this episode, Scoville discusses the craft of writing for the theater, her journey from actor to writer, her experience as a Black artist, and she describes why new voices and new stories are so important today.

Music for the episode is: 

"Til I Get Back on My Feet” from the musical, Flophouse.
Music by Joanna Burns, book and lyrics by Justin Anthony Long & Joël René Scoville
Sung by Joanna Burns

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

On the eve of the publication of her first book, Rachel Rueckert, the current editor-in-chief of Exponent II magazine, describes the events that led to her memoir, East Winds that will appear in mid-November, published by By Common Consent Press. It is a chronicle of her one-year honeymoon traveling around the globe and questioning what the institution of marriage is all about. Rueckert talks about the journey, the book writing process, and finding peace with big picture decisions.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Author Glen Nelson discusses his discovery of an important body of 1930s fiction by one of the era's most famous cartoonists, John Held, Jr.  Today he's known for his magazine and newspaper illustrations of flappers and other 1920s characters, but in a flurry of activity from 1930 to 1937, John Held, Jr. published four novels and four collections of short stories that are mostly unknown today. This podcast episode describes the fiction, talks about how the author came to discover it, and makes the connections between Held's upbringing in Salt Lake City and how his Mormonism appear in his art and fiction.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Curator Margaret Olsen Hemming, artist Kwani Povi Winder, and scholar Vinna Chintaram gather to talk about different approaches to and perspectives on Heavenly Mother as they react to the exhibition at the Center Gallery, The Sacred Feminine in LDS Art & Theology. Olsen Hemming is the curator of the exhibition. Povi Winder is one of the artists whose work is in the show, and Chintaram is a PhD student at University North Carolina  Chapel Hill studying religion and culture.

Music for the episode is “Women of Faith,” lyrics by Matthew B. Biggs and music by Michael Kosorok.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

To mark the exhibition opening, The Sacred Feminine in LDS Art & Theology, at the Center Gallery in New York, its curator Margaret Olsen Hemming speaks about global artworks that imagine what Heavenly Mother is like. The LDS doctrine that we are from heavenly parents is not new, but recent LDS artists from around the world are building on the artistic foundation laid more than 100 years ago by poet Eliza R. Snow and painter John Hafen to further a discussion about the nature and role of the sacred feminine.

Music for the episode is “Women of Faith,” lyrics by Matthew B. Biggs and music by Michael Kosorok.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

The self portrait, Wrapped Up in a False Sense of Security, by Kirsten Holt Beitler, is the subject of this artist's interview. The work which is part of the exhibition, Siloed: Art for Uncertain Times, at the Center Gallery shows the artist wrapped in toilet paper, painted during the first months of the pandemic when hoarding and bouts of consumer panic spread across the country. Beitler is a single mom of four children, an artist, and a muralist at a grocery store in St. George, Utah. In this episode, she describes how  isolation during the pandemic and personal heartbreak have become crucibles for new, wry, self-exploring works.

Music for this episode is the nineteenth-century Mormon folk song, "St. George and the Drag-on," by Charlie Lowell Walker. 

Liked this episode? Send us a text.

A new body of art work by Maggie Golightly Haslam is explored in this episode. The artist, whose works are featured in the current exhibition at the Center Gallery in New York City, embodies the 21st century zero-waste ethos and turns it into a process of art making. How can materials be recycled, upcycled, and reenvisioned, she asks. Her inventive and beautiful poured watercolor works are created with materials that have been harvested and salvaged from leftover media of earlier series of works, thereby linking them into a new sort of visual art lineage. Larger ethical questions emerge: What is art for? Why make it? How do the materials direct what the art wants to be?

Music for the episode is "Bearing Us Up" by Robert Strobel, a winner of the Center's Art for Uncertain Times project.

Liked this episode? Send us a text.