Ships of Hagoth is a digital-first literary magazine featuring creative nonfiction and theoretical essays by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Where other LDS-centric publications often look inward at the LDS tradition, we seek literary works that look outward through the curious, charitable lens of faith.
Ships of Hagoth is pleased to announce its first book-length message in a bottle, AND ALL ETERNITY SHOOK, by
Jacob Bender, released April 2022.
Jacob L. Bender is also the author of Modern Death in Irish and Latin American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), a work similarly rooted in his Puerto Rican mission service and his mother's passing. In LDS studies, he has previously written for Dialogue, Sunstone, Peculiar Pages, Ships of Hagoth, the Eugene England Foundation, and The Association of Mormon Letters.
Enraged, he wrestles with his God in passionate prayer as he pleads for her life; images and memories of his mission and his Mom jump, cut, and splice together in a cinematic crescendo, flashing furiously before his eyes as though he were the one dying and not her; all as he feels after some miracle, some impossibility, and the peace which surpasses understanding.
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A CALL FOR
We are hoping—for “one must needs hope”—for creative nonfiction, theoretical essays, and craft essays that seek radical new ways to explore and express theological ideas; that are, like Hagoth, “exceedingly curious.”
We favor creative nonfiction that can trace its lineage back to Michel de Montaigne. Whether narrative, analytical, or devotional, these essays lean ruminative, conversational, meandering, impressionistic, and are reluctant to wax didactic.
As for theoretical essays: we welcome work that playfully and charitably explores the wide world of arts & letters—especially works created from differing religious, non-religious, and even irreligious perspectives—through the peculiar lens of a Latter-day Saint.
We read and publish submissions as quickly as possible, and accept simultaneous submissions.
How a pair of 1984 Punk Rock double-albums punched way above their weight-class–as did Joseph Smith–as we must relearn to do today.
An essay on thwarted ambitions, road-trips, Rexburg, and the Yangtze River.
Do not procrastinate the day of your repentance.
Just who are these annotations for? For that matter, who is the Book of Mormon for?
My children’s faces are nothing like the sun
Or, on following the Savior’s example in loving the cast-off and despised.
Someone please perform the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in front of a Nativity.
“Whosoever shall offend these little ones, it were better that a millstone be hung from his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
-Matthew 18:6
“Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.”
-Matthew 21:31
How the more interesting wrestles with God are always occurring in the wilderness.
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