Author Reading and Discussion with Holly Welker

Author Holly Welker will read from her new edited collection Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage.The essays speak to a diversity of life experiences: what happens when one partner rejects Church teachings; marrying outside one's faith; the pain of divorce and widowhood; the horrors of spousal abuse; the hard journey from visions of an idealized marriage to the everyday truth; sexuality within Mormon marriage; how the pressure to find a husband shapes young women's actions and sense of self; and the ways Mormon belief and culture can influence second marriages and same-sex unions. The result is an unflinching look at the earthly realities of an institution central to Mormon life.
Holly Welker is an award-winning poet and essayist living in Arizona. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Best American Essays, and other publications. Her book will be available for sale and signing after the presentation.

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/36nww5mh9780252040344.html