Signature Books Podcast

For episode 16, we talk with Dayna Patterson about her newly released collection of poetry, O Lady, Speak Again . Patterson engages with her faith crisis in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, her "ladylike rage" with the patriarchy, and how writing poetry has been a safe way to speak her truth. She also reads two poems from her book that beautifully weave together themes of...

Episode 15 is a recording of a panel discussion held at the Signature Books offices on Thursday, January 19, 2023, moderated by Benjamin E. Park, editor of the new book, DNA Mormon: Perspectives on the Legacy of Historian D. Michael Quinn . Seven of the contributors to the book joined Park for the discussion: Maxine Hanks, Patrick Q. Mason, Gary James Bergera, Martha Bradley-Evans, Calvin Burke, B...

 For episode 14, we talk with Michael Hicks, author of the new memoir Wineskin: Freakin’ Jesus in the ‘60s and ‘70s . Although we know Hicks as a scholar who writes on Mormonism and music and taught at Brigham Young University for thirty-five years, his background was anything but a conventional LDS upbringing. For the first seventeen and a half years of his life, he was a born-again Christian in...

Utah’s legislature recently voted to send a statue of Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon to represent the state in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Just who was Mattie Cannon, as she was known, and why does she matter today? Defeating her own husband in an election, Cannon became the first female state senator in the nation a quarter-century before most U.S. women could even vote. Our guest, Constance L. L...

For episode 12, we present a session of the 2022 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium held on Saturday, July 30, titled, “In Sacred Loneliness: The Documents­­­­­­­­­­­––An Introduction and a Reading.” Here, historian Todd Compton discusses his new book; the session also includes six women who read the words of some of the women who married Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois, between 1841 and 1843. Nauvoo p...

 For Episode 11, we interview Gregor McHardy, author of Eight Myths of the Great Apostasy . Latter-day Saints have long taught that for there to have been a Restoration, the original church led by Jesus and his apostles had to have been taken from the earth due to falsehoods creeping in, which then led to authority to govern the church being lost. From there it took nearly two millennia before any...

If you’ve ever seen Salt Lake City’s Church History Library, Provo’s new Missionary Training Center, or many of the modern temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you’ve likely appreciated the beauty of these structures. What you may not know is that these iconic buildings were designed by a transgender woman. In this episode, Signature Books Director Barbara Jones Brown talks...

Twenty-five years ago, Todd Compton broke new ground with In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith , each chapter containing biographies of the thirty-three women Compton identified as having married the Mormon prophet. This new volume, In Sacred Loneliness: The Documents ,  contains the primary source material created by these women, which made up much of the narrative of the first...

 In episode 8, Signature Books director Barbara Jones Brown talks with Romney Burke about his new biography of Susa Young Gates, the most famous and accomplished of Brigham Young’s fifty-six children. She was loyal to her father and her church, founded the Young Woman’s Journal and Relief Society Magazine , and was an author of poetry, fiction, and biography. But outside of her church work she was...

 In episode 7, author Ron Huggins and Sandra Tanner return to talk further about Ron’s new book, Lighthouse: Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism . This episode was a session of the Sunstone Symposium that took place in Sandy, Utah, at the Mountain America Expo Center, on Saturday, July 30, 2022. It is a discussion moderated by Barbara Jones Brown, director of Signat...

 In episode 6, author Ron Huggins and Sandra Tanner join us to discuss Ron’s new book, Lighthouse: Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved critics of Mormonism . For years the Tanners together ran—and today Sandra still runs—the Utah Lighthouse Ministry. Living and operating just blocks from the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Tanners have dedicated thei...

 In episode 5, Barbara Jones Brown, new company director of Signature Books, and the first woman to hold this position, introduces herself to listeners and shares her thoughts about the company and her vision for its future. She also discusses her background and her own work in Mormon history. Not only is she co-author of a forthcoming book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but for four years she...

 In episode 4, author Michael Fillerup talks about his new collection, The Year They Gave Women the Priesthood and Other Stories . The lead story under the same title opens this spectacular volume of thoughtful, disturbing, enlightening, and brilliant essays. What would it be like in the LDS Church if it were led by women? Could the men handle it? Could the women handle it? Although a fictional ac...

In episode 3, historian and professor emeritus Newell G. Bringhurst and I discuss his new book Harold B. Lee: Life and Thought . Lee’s tenure as LDS Church president was short—less than eighteen months, but his influence upon Mormon practice and policy spanned the 1930s and into the 1970s. Anyone who knew him had an opinion about him. He was strong-willed, quick to anger, and sensitive to criticis...

In episode 2, retired archivist and writer Gary Topping sits down with me to talk about his new biography, D. Michael Quinn: Mormon Historian , newly published by Signature Books. We discuss Quinn’s early life, the influences that led him to research and write Mormon history, as well as some insight into the man himself. His was not the typical Mormon upbringing, and it made him one of the more un...

In Episode 1, historian and archivist John Sillito discusses his new book, B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena , published by Signature Books. We talk about Roberts’s life as a young Mormon convert, born in England and raised in Utah, and what led to his becoming perhaps the most prominent intellectual in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Roberts was active in both church serv...