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.
On my mission in Puerto Rico, I had a companion who was an ex-pothead. To be clear, he never bragged about it or anything;
Listen, I don’t want no guff from you—because life is already so staggeringly capricious and unfair as it is, that on the ultra-rare occasions when
“In translation we lend our lives—our minds, our ears, our mouths—to the local resurrection of old texts, dead words, and lost voices.”
~ Adam S. Miller
In the days before CDs and Auxiliary-jacks came standard, I recall having to hit the Seek button on the cassette-deck of my parent’s 1996 Ford Taurus in order to find the next song…
Before murder, I briefly considered opening the window and letting the bee bumble elsewhere, but saw the screen would keep it trapped.
Perhaps there really is a single God of the Multiverse filtering all possible Earths into the Celestial Kingdom well before interstellar space travel ever becomes possible.
It shouts, thrashes, and bellows just to be heard in marginalized corners, and it cries out for a lover or to a lover or after a lover: lonesome, vulnerable, cocksure, embittered, impassioned, and exultant in turn in any taxonomy.
I will describe some of the theological foundations for these fine Mormon writers’ work and review their literary heritage.
Clearly, Mormonism had literate beginnings which developed early into a distinctive literature, a rich legacy forgotten in the mediocrity of present-day Mormon expression. That legacy, to be sure, must be sought in more than belles lettres…
We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God’s ammunition is not exhausted. His brightest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God’s name and by his help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven, though its foundations may now be low in earth.
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