Tuesday, Jun 21, 2022

EVENING WITH THE EDITORS

We are pleased to announce that Kerry Spencer Pray and Jenn Lee Smith, editors of I Spoke to You with Silence: Essays from Queer Mormons of Marginalized Genders (published by University of Utah Press) will be here Tuesday, June 21, to speak about their book. In addition, we hope to see various contributors from the book who will speak and/or sign their essays. They will be here from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and will speak at 6:00 and will answer questions and sign books before and after that time. We hope you will be able to make it that night but, if not, we can mail a signed copy or hold one here at the store for pick-up. To RSVP on Facebook, click here.

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Nobody knows what to do about queer Mormons. The institutional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prefers to pretend they don’t exist, that they can choose their way out of who they are, leave, or at least stay quiet in a community that has no place for them. Even queer Mormons don’t know what to do about queer Mormons. Their lived experience is shrouded by a doctrine in which heteronormative marriage is non-negotiable and gender is unchangeable. For women, trans Mormons, and Mormons of other marginalized genders, this invisibility is compounded by social norms which elevate (implicitly white) cisgender male voices above those of everyone else. 

This collection of essays gives voice to queer Mormons. The authors who share their stories—many speaking for the first time from the closet—do so here in simple narrative prose. They talk about their identities, their experiences, their relationships, their heartbreaks, their beliefs, and the challenges they face. Some stay in the church, some do not, some are in constant battles with themselves and the people around them as they make agonizing decisions about love and faith and community. Their stories bravely convey what it means to be queer, Mormon, and marginalized—what it means to have no voice and yet to speak anyway.

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I Spoke to You with Silence: Essays from Queer Mormons of Marginalized Genders. University of Utah Press. Paperback. 288pp. $24.95

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Kerry Spencer Pray teaches writing at Stevenson University in Owings Mills, Maryland. Mormon by birth, she taught at Brigham Young University for fourteen years and spent nearly twenty years in a mixed-orientation marriage. She lives with and coparents children with her wife and gay ex-husband. 

Jenn Lee Smith is founder of Bewilder Films, which focuses on stories of under-represented people. Raised an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she began her producing career with stories at the intersection of religion and sexual/gender orientation and has since collaborated on BIPOC and environmental films. She lives in California with her husband, children, and dog.

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