Being one of the writers, and eager for my share of the groupies, I attended the first book signing with great anticipation. How could the event be anything but fab? After all, five of Mormonism’s funniest people would be gathered into one place. The chemistry would be irresistible.

It turns out our chemistry was at least mostly irresistible. The resistability started when the Borders people forgot we were coming. But we were not to be stopped. We hauled the table out ourselves, stacked it with books, and started to make plans.

“We should put up funny signs,” one of us declared.

“We should put a bowl of candy on the table,” enthused another.

“We should juggle things!” crowed a third.

Then we all realized that we really should have planned this before we came.

The signing wasn’t a flop. We overcame our lack of preparedness and managed to charm a few innocent passerby into adoring us.

On the other hand …

I walked into Deseret Book Saturday afternoon and found myself in the middle of a traffic jam. Most of the participants seemed to be female, and all of them facing the same direction: toward a stand of books and a table full of women writing in those books. What could be going on?

I’ll tell you what was going on: the authors and editor of The Mother In Me were having a book signing party.

One look around and it became immediately clear to me that I should have hired these sisters to organize The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer’s book signing. Not only had they put a bowl of candy on the table, they had provided an entire buffet including a platter of REAL HOMEMADE BAKLAVA!

Then a lovely and intelligent young woman stepped up to the podium and announced some raffle winners.

Yes, they had planned a raffle, too. In fact, my ten-year-old son won a bath set.

No jugglers, though. Unless you count Kathryn Soper (the editor of the book), who showed amazing adeptness at juggling people. Metaphorically.

Two years ago when Segullah made its debut I fielded lots of questions. The most frequent was this: Why a new journal?

My answer: Because Mormon women need an independent forum that maintains a faithful perspective.

“Independent forum” rarely caused any hang-ups. “Faithful perspective” was a speed bump for some (and that’s a topic for another post). But others moved right along to the “women” part. Aren’t male perspectives just as valuable? some of them asked.

Of course, of course. I had radical feminist leanings in college, but I’ve far outgrown the deluded belief that men are, basically, chumps. I believe that the greatest heights of humanity come from the union of male and female, in intimate pairs and in larger communities. And I’d love to see a faith-promoting journal of personal writings by LDS men and women. For that matter, I’d love to see one for men only. But those are someone else’s projects. Mine, as editor of Segullah, is fostering the female voice. (read the rest).

2008 has been an exciting year on Mount Segullah. We recently published our summer issue, which features prose and poetry contest honorees. In December we’ll publish our tenth issue since our 2005 debut. Our subscriber base is steadily growing, and we’re hearing from some great new voices. You can subscribe here, view the archive here, and find our submission guidelines here. The deadline for our 2008 literary contests is December 31, so get writing!

We’re also excited about the recent release of our staff anthology, The Mother in Me: Real-world Reflections on Growing Into Motherhood , published by Deseret Book. (To my knowledge, this release marked the first appearance of the word “nipple” in mainstream LDS literature.) We blushed over Margaret Young’s glowing endorsement], and we’re looking forward to reviews around the bloggernacle. And hey–we want you to come to our book release party!

Saturday October 18, 2-4 p.m

Deseret Book at the University Mall in Orem, UT

You can hear more about the book in my interview with Doug Wright, which will be broadcast on KSL radio (SLC, 1160 AM), Sunday October 12 from 9-9:30 a.m.

I suppose that’s enough shameless self-promotion for now, but we’ll soon be back with more.  My thanks to Stephen for creating this round table (vanity mirror?)–Segullah is pleased to be part of it.