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.
A roundabout reminder that we are to “bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light”–and that not condescendingly, not patronizingly, but with a very real sense of our irrevocable interdependence, and of how that reliance on each other is what makes us feel alive.
On what Dante’s Inferno and a trip to the Vatican can remind us about LDS church leadership.
“Holy Ghost,” from Low’s 2013 album The Invisible Way, is lyrically the most straight-forward LDS song in their extensive catalogue.
“I love that man better who swears a stream as long as my arm yet deals justice to his neighbors and mercifully deals his substance to the poor, than the long, smooth-faced hypocrite.” -Joseph Smith
Ships of Hagoth is pleased to announce the release and publication of our first full-length message in a bottle, AND ALL ETERNITY SHOOK, by Jacob L. Bender, available in both paperback and ebook formats HERE. The book–a work of experimental nonfiction based upon the author’s own experiences–concerns a young missionary who comes home after two years in Puerto Rico only to find his mother on her deathbed.
i. The mountains were parched, their summer thirst unquenched by the usual store of snowpack. The reservoirs were dangerously low, and each day, the sky
A second excerpt from our forthcoming message in a bottle And All Eternity Shook, wherein a young missionary comes home after two years in Puerto Rico only to find his mother on her deathbed…
Jack Harrell’s 2007 short-story “Calling and Election” is a strange, uncomfortable, ambiguous freak of a story. I mean that endearingly. The story aggressively raises narrative
A young missionary comes home after two years in Puerto Rico only to find his mother on her deathbed.
When a Punk rocker does a better job of observing the Easter season than we do.
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