Authors abound at BYU-I
BYU-Idaho professor’s story wins first prize
- posted: 25 Sept. 2007
- scrollarts@byui.edu
Out of 133 short stories submitted, “Calling and Election,” by English Department faculty member Jack Harrell, was awarded first place in the annual Irreantum Fiction Contest, sponsored by the Association of Mormon Letters (AML).
In the story, a man from a small Idaho town is told by a mysterious visitor that his calling and election has been made sure, and within the next day, he loses his house, job, money and public reputation.
The inspiration for Calling and Election came while Harrell was teaching a class on Shakespeare.
“This story came out of some thoughts I had from studying the play King Lear,” Harrell said. “Like King Lear, he loses everything.”
But Harrell doesn’t always write about Latter-day Saints. First he makes sure it is good for the story.
“Some of my stories are about Mormons, and some of them aren’t,” Harrell said. “There are some times where I think that the fact that a character is Mormon is really essential to the story.”
In addition to writing and reading Shakespeare, Harrell is enthusiastic about the contest sponsor.
AML is a non profit organization founded in 1976 by a group of volunteers who wanted to promote high-quality writing by, for and about Mormons.
“They publish anything of literary interest that has to do with the Mormon experience,” Harrell said.
AML publishes a literary journal called Irreantum twice per year, which showcases the best of Latter-day Saint fiction, poetry and drama.
Calling and Election will be found in two places: first, in the Spring 2008 issue of Irreantum, and also in a collection of Harrell’s short stories that will be published in 2008 by Signature Books.
Students can order copies of Irreantum and learn more about AML at www.aml-online.org.
Harrell’s first novel, Vernal Promises, was published in 2003 and won the Association for Mormon Letters Best Manuscript Award. Harrell is currently working on a new novel. 
