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 With the release of Dan Vogel’s highly anticipated new book, Charisma under Pressure: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1831–1839, Signature’s three-volume biography of Mormonism’s founding prophet is now complete. The other two volumes in this series, Richard S. Van Wagoner’s Natural Born Seer: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1805–1830, and Martha Bradley-Evans’s Glorious in Persecution: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1839–1844 continue to be available for purchase.
Vogel’s meticulously researched,1,000-page tome covers Smith’s Ohio-Missouri period in impressive, flowing detail. During these years, the church acquired its first printing press and started its first newspaper. Smith’s revelations were compiled in 1833 but a mob destroyed the press in Independence before the book could be widely published. Two years later he expanded that collection and published it, followed by a second edition of the Book of Mormon. In Kirtland, Smith began translating the Book of Abraham, and completed his House of the Lord in 1836. He established a financial institution in 1837 called the Kirtland Safety Society, but with its failure came a period of apostasy that nearly toppled his leadership. The book climaxes with the turbulent end of Mormonism’s Missouri period, culminating in Smith’s escape from Liberty jail.
For more about Charisma under Pressure, see the Q&A with Vogel below.
Signature Authors Awarded, Honored
at Annual AML Conference
Several Signature authors were honored during the Association for Mormon Letters’ annual conference, held virtually April 27–29. Michael Fillerup won the Best Short Fiction Collection Award for his book, The Year They Gave Women the Priesthood and Other Stories. “Again and again Fillerup’s flawed, complex characters approach the limit of their suffering and stumble forward,” notes AML’s website in highlighting this award. “The stories take on a variety of forms—a novella, the transcript of a confession, sudden fiction that reads like a prose poem, a letter. His sentences are exquisite.” Click here to read more about this award, and here to read Fillerup's 2022 guest post about this book on AML's blog.
Also at the conference, Stephen Carter, author of Virginia Sorensen: Pioneering Mormon Author, and editor of Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death, became this year’s recipient of the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters. Established in 2005, this award is aimed at honoring those midway through their careers as a way to motivate them to continue on with their work. Read more about Carter and the award by clicking here.
Finally, Michael Hicks, author of several books, including two published by Signature, Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection: Essays on Mormon Music and his personal memoir Wineskin: Freakin’ Jesus in the '60s and '70s, received the 2023 AML Lifetime Achievement Award. Read all about it here and view a YouTube video from the conference of Michael discussing his work here.
A big congratulations to all three of these contributors to Mormon letters!
Signature Board Member Awarded Honorary Doctorate
 On Thursday, May 4, the University of Utah awarded four honorary doctorate degrees to people "who have achieved distinction in academic pursuits, the arts, professions, business, government, civic affairs or in service to the university." Among those so honored was Signature Advisory Board member Camilla Smith, pictured here with her diploma in Humane Letters presented during the university's commencement exercises. Camilla's husband, George, co-founded Signature in 1981 and is president of the company.
Camilla has her own background in publishing, having worked at G.P. Putnam’s Sons Publishers and Columbia University Teacher’s College Press. She is also past president and trustee of the science-based Leakey Foundation. Through her efforts Signature partnered with the foundation to publish Evan Hadingham's book Discovering Us: Fifty Great Discoveries in Human Origins in 2021. You can read more about Camilla Smith and the others honored this year by clicking here.
Congratulations Camilla for this well-deserved honor.
Authors of Signature Brief Biography Series
to Speak at May Event
Mark your calendars for Tuesday, May 23, at 6:30 p.m. for an evening at Signature Books with six authors of our Brief Biography Series.
These biographers include:
Kenneth L. Cannon II, George Q. Cannon: Politician, Publisher, Politician of Polygamy
Constance L. Lieber, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon: Suffragist, Senator, Plural Wife
Thomas G. Alexander, John A. Widtsoe: Scientist and Theologian (forthcoming)
Stephen Carter, Virginia Sorensen: Pioneering Mormon Author
Gary Topping, D. Michael Quinn: Mormon Historian
A short paper by Newell Bringhurst on his book, Harold B. Lee: Life and Thought, will be read by another participant.
The authors will talk about their subjects and their subject's encounters with each other and each other’s history. This will be a fascinating evening for anyone interested in biography and Mormon history. Doors will open at 6:00.
Signature’s Poetry Night
Nine Signature poets r  ead from their collections at our April 26 poetry night, held at Signature Books in celebration of National Poetry Month. The event focused on Dayna Patterson’s new book, O Lady, Speak Again, her 2020 title, If Mother Braids a Waterfall, and the new edition of Utah Poet Laureate Lisa Bickmore’s Haste.
The other poets who made the night magical were Utah Poetry Society’s 1999 Poet of the Year Marilyn Bushman-Carlton (Her Side of It); Utah Valley University’s former Poet in Residence, Alex Caldiero (Some Love); Laura Hamblin (Eyes of a Flounder); Warren Scott Hatch, winner of the Utah Arts Council and Western Humanities Review poetry prize (Mapping the Bones of the World); Susan Elizabeth Howe, emeritus creative writing and contemporary American poetry teacher at Brigham Young University (Salt); Kathy Evans (Imagination Comes to Breakfast); and Cynthia Sillitoe, the daughter of Linda Sillitoe, who read from her mother’s collection (Owning the Moon). Millie Tullis, editor of Psaltery & Lyre, was a special guest poet who also read from her work.
Recordings of the event will soon be released as a Signature Books Podcast episode and on our YouTube channel.
Centerville to Host John Sillito on B. H. Roberts Biography
Historian and retired Weber State University professor and archivist John Sillito will speak about his book B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena at the Centerville City Hall in Centerville, Utah, on May 11, at 7:00 p.m. The hall is located at 250 North Main Street.
Brigham Henry Roberts (1857–1933), who became one of the most prolific historians in the LDS Church, was born in England to Mormon parents. He wed and lived monogamously before eventually marrying two more wives. But polygamy for Roberts came at a time when the practice was under attack, and he was jailed for a time. His rise to the First Council of Seventy in 1888 came less than a decade after his earliest missionary service to the Midwest and Southern States. In 1884 he risked personal harm by disguising himself as a tramp and journeying to Lewis County, Tennessee, to retrieve the bodies of two murdered Mormon missionaries. His election as a Democrat to the US House of Representatives in 1898 was a major feat, but it proved a disappointment when his plural marriages cost him his seat before he could serve.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, click here. Latest Podcast Releases
In Signature’s first April episode, which you can access here, marketing specialist Beth Brumer Reeve talks with marketing manager Devery Anderson, company director Barbara Jones Brown, and editorial manager John Hatch about the books they’ve recently authored and how being authors informs their efforts in working with the writers Signature publishes.
In the second podcast, available here, Anderson discusses with Brown and Hatch a few of Signature’s forthcoming titles: Dan Vogel’s magisterial Charisma under Pressure: Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1831–1839; Sara M. Patterson’s The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism; Kenneth L. Cannon’s George Q. Cannon: Politician, Publisher, Apostle of Polygamy; D. Michael Quinn’s Chosen Path: A Memoir; a two-volume diary edited by Noel A. Carmack and Charles M. Hatch, Useful to the Church and Kingdom: The Journals of James H. Martineau, Pioneer and Patriarch, 1850–1918; and a forthcoming anthology of essays by Mormon and Mormon-adjacent LGBTQ+ writers about their personal experiences.
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