Presented to: Levi S. Peterson
For: Greening Wheat: Fifteen Mormon Short Stories
The awards committee said, "This collection goes far toward proving Peterson's thesis that 'good stories are appearing among the Mormons, greening like wheat in a Utah spring.' Centering in what Peterson has called 'the possibility of wrong behavior,' these stories variously examine the tension between Sainthood as fact and Sainthood as aspiration, between belief and doubt, and between expected blessings and the traumas of reality. Peterson has performed an important service for Mormon letters by collecting 'an abundant sampling of [Mormon] experience--comedy and tragedy, ecstasy and disillusionment, restraint and sensuality, heroism and failure, romance and defiance.' The Association for Mormon Letters commends Levi S. Peterson for making thee hitherto generally inaccessible stories available to a larger LDS and non-LDS audience."