Presented to: William A. Wilson
For: "In Praise of Ourselves: Stories to Tell"
An excerpt from the citation states, "Bert Wilson has stories to tell. He tells stories well. And they are our stories (even, and perhaps most especially, when they are his own). Missionary stories. Stories of Relief Society presidents and bishops. Three Nephite stories. Trickster tales. Serious stories of humor. Farming stories. Outlaw stories. Theological stories. Personal narratives. His mother's stories of Riddyville, a town that now exists only in stories.
"His--our--stories are celebratory, healing, human stories. Stories that help us build a sense of community and then deal with the pressures that community imposes. Stories without which we have no selves. Stories that shape our lives as we shape them. He doesn't teach us to tell stories (for he seems to think of us as natural geniuses), but he does hep us to value them, to study them, to recognize our humanity in them, to feel again the power of our own good fictions, the joy of our divine capacity to create."