On “Father Christmas” and the Englishness of The Kinks
Why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is The Kinks of Christianity—or at least should be.
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.
Why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is The Kinks of Christianity—or at least should be.
In the late Barbara Ehrenreich’s[1]Who passed away just this last September. 2013 study Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, she details the
A riff on a song that never actually mentions the song.
In solidarity with the striking UC grad students and the striking New School adjuncts in NYC.
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me
Just how literally do we believe the dead are with us anyways?
The quotation haunting any conversation of Mormon literature (whatever that may mean), is the Orson F. Whitney prophecy that “we shall yet have Shakespeares and
What I realized from both the most tone-deaf, and the most passionate, stake high-council speakers I ever encountered as a YSA.
Back around the turn of the millennium in the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest, my teenage self was selected to some “Stake Youth Leadership Committee”
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