Notice: The Mormon Literature & Creative Arts database has moved to mormonarts.lib.byu.edu.
Bruce W. Jorgensen
Included in 75 Significant Mormon Poets

View Works by this Person
Also Known As Wayne Jorgensen; B. W. Jorgensen; Bruce Jorgensen
Birth Place Salina, Utah
Children He is the father of three daughters and five sons, the grandfather of four girls and five boys.
Education M.A. in English (1969), Brigham Young University
Ph.D. in American Literature (1978), Cornell University
Career He teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University and writes criticism. He writes poetry as well as fiction under the name Wayne Jorgensen. He has most recently been pursuing studies of the American fiction writers Reynolds Price, George P Elliott, and Gina Berriault. Jorgensen, who has served as President of the Association for Mormon Letters, has written criticism that has been seminal in shaping Mormon literary tradition.
Awards Attended Cornell on Woodrow Wilson and Danforth fellowships
Short Story Award, Utah ARts Council, 1993 for "Who Jane, Who Tarzan."
Association for Mormon Letters Award, 1994 for "Who Jane, Who Tarzan."
Other Biographical Information His interests range from the scriptures, Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine to Emmanuel Levinas and Raymond Carver, but most recently he has pursued studies of Reynolds Price and Gina Berriault, and he continues to write his own fiction. He has published poems, stories, critical essays, and reviews in Carolina Quarterly, The Ensign, Modern Fiction Studies, BYU Studies, Sunstone, Dialogue, Western American Literature, Wasatch Review, and High Plains Literary Review.

The main study of his life since childhood has been the hearing and telling of stories. His work focuses at the intersection of story, the ethics of agency, and the sacred. As an LDS literary critic, he would do the works of Abraham, who waited in the door of his tent to welcome strangers, and pled with Yahweh to spare the Cities of the Plain for the sake of even ten righteous persons. He now feels that all his writing is a long, intermittent, tentative exploration of the LDS scriptural teaching that "the spirit and the body are the soul of man."

Works by Bruce W. Jorgensen
Sort by title
YearGenre
A Note on Lewis B. Horne
Sorensen Bibliography Bibliography
The Vocation of David Wright: An Essay in Analytic Biography1978Biography / Memoir
What if the Book of Mormon Were a Novel--Which of Course it is Not2004Criticism
Imagining Mormon Marriage, Part 2: Toward a "Marriage Group" of Contemporary Mormon Stories2002Criticism
Imagining Mormon Marriage, Part I: The Mythic, the Novelistic, and Jack Weyland's Charly1997Criticism
Undefining "Faithful Fiction": (The Sophic Stranger Rides Again) (With[out] His Evil Twin)1997Criticism
Heritage of Hostility: The Mormon Attack on Fiction in the 19th Century1996Criticism
To Tell and Hear Stories: Let the Stranger Say1993Criticism
Literature, Mormon Writers of: Short Stories1992Criticism Bibliography
Groping the Mormon Eros1987Criticism
Romantic Lyric Form and Western Mormon Experience in the Stories of Douglas Thayer1987Criticism
A "Smaller Canvas" of the Mormon Short Story Since 19501984Criticism
Herself Moving Beside Herself: The Shape of Mormon Belief in The Evening and the Morning1980Criticism
Element and Glory: Reflections and Speculations on the Mormon Verbal Imagination1979Criticism
Retrospection: Giant Joshua1978Criticism
Digging the Foundation: Making and Reading Mormon Literature1974Criticism
Imperceptive Hands: Some Recent Mormon Verse1970Criticism
The Dark Way to the Tree: Typological Unity in The Book of Mormon1830Criticism
Reading the Book of Mormon as Typological NarrativeCriticism
Eros in LDS Life and Literature: A Panel with B. W. Jorgensen, Margaret Blair Young, and Karin Anderson England1996Interview / Panel
When Mormon Literature Becomes "Mormon": A Panel with Scott Abbott, Susan Elizabeth Howe, B. W. Jorgensen, and Brian Evenson, Moderated by Marni Asplund-Campbell1996Interview / Panel
Domesticity and the Call to Art: A Panel1994Interview / Panel
Almost But Not QuiteNovel
Roughly One of the R's: Some Notes of a BYU Fiction Teach (with a Pedantry of Endnotes)1996Personal Essay
Come Into His Presence with SingingPersonal Essay
Getting Home from Ithaca, 19682002Poetry
Poetry Month 1999 : Two Notes from a Road Trip2002Poetry
For Bread and Breath of Life1989Poetry
Friends: A Moral Song1989Poetry
A Litany for the Dark Solstice1989Poetry
Thinking of the End in Fire1985Poetry
The Light Come Down1979Poetry
In the Cold House1978Poetry
For Bread and Breath of Life1977Poetry
Near an Abandoned Canal Bridge in Southern Utah1973Poetry
Incompletions for a Living Father1972Poetry
Opening Lunch on Getting to the Office1972Poetry
Weight of Glory1972Poetry
Gathering Apples in First Snow1971Poetry
On Second West in Cedar City, Utah: Canticle for the Virgin1971Poetry
For No DreamsPoetry
Syllables for a January ThawPoetry
Maverick Fiction1983Review
[Review of] Hunters in the Snow, by David Kranes1980Review
[Review of] Recapitulation, by Wallace Stegner1979Review
[Review of] Turn Again Home, by Herbert Harker1978Review
Measures of Music1999Short Story
Two Years Sunday1992Short Story
Born of the Water1980Short Story
A Song for One Still Voice1979Short Story






Total Queries: 123. Total Execution Time: 0.151 sec.
Copyright © 2003 Brigham Young University. All Rights Reserved.

Feedback: GideonBurton@byu.edu