From the Association for Mormon Letters:

AML is pleased to announce that Margaret Blair Young has taken office as the new AML President, with J. Scott Bronson as President-Elect. Boyd Petersen, last year’s president, will now serve a term as Past President. Other new members of the board are Phillip Snyder and Charles Swift. James Goldberg and Eric Samuelsen will continue on the board. Lynn Bronson has accepted the position as Treasurer, and Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury has a new title, Membership Secretary. Jacob Profitt continues to serve as webmaster and Darlene Young as secretary.

The 2009 AML Awards were also presented at the AML Annual Meeting at Utah Valley University on 27 February 2010.
 
Drama    
Melissa Leilani Larson for Little Happy Secrets
   
Film    
Jed Wells for Fire Creek
   
Honorary Lifetime Membership    
James D’Arc
   
Humor    
Elna Baker for The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance
   
Memoir    
Kathryn Lynard Soper for The Year My Son and I Were Born
   
Novel    
Todd Robert Petersen for Rift
   
Novel Honorable Mention    
Jamie Ford for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
   
Online Writing    
Sandra Tayler for One Cobble at a Time
   
Poetry    
Lance Larsen for Backyard Alchemy
   
Publishing    
Christopher Bigelow for Zarahemla Books
   
Service to AML
Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
   
Short Fiction    
Larry Menlove for "Path of Antelope, Pelican, and Moon"
   
Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters    
Levi Peterson
   
Young Adult Literature    
Carol Lynch Williams for The Chosen One
 
The citations for the awards can be read on the AML website at http://www.mormonletters.org/Awards/Year.aspx?year=2009

Just follow the links to each award page.

Melted Hearts screened at the 2010 LDS Film Festival on Friday, January 22 to a packed theater and an enthusiastic audience. The film is about a pair of missionaries, Elder Pedro Rodriguez and Elder Brian Lauper, who have trouble getting along at first. Brian is upset at having been released from his calling as an Assistant to the President, and Pedro has a grudge against Brian because he's American. After they go through some trials together and Brian saves Pedro's life when he gets seriously ill, the two become friends and keep in touch after their missions have ended. In the second half of the film, Brian and his family take a vacation to Mexico, where they meet Pedro, who falls in love with Brian's sister, Wendy. Pedro doesn't have the courage to tell Wendy before she goes back home to Provo, but with the encouragement of his family, he takes heart and hitchhikes from Mexico City to Utah to find her and confess his love.

Melted Hearts is a heart-warming story about gaining courage to follow one's dreams–a story inspired by director Jorge Ramirez Rivera's own experience as a young man of setting off to the United States to pursue an education, against all odds. Even with an inspiring story, however, the film has some flaws. There were several times while watching Melted Hearts that I had to suspend my disbelief. Due to budget and casting concerns, the two missionaries had longish hair, and the actor who played the American Elder Brian Lauper was not a native speaker of English. I was also left wondering how Pedro made it across the border into the United States when he didn't have time to arrange a visa. Many of these concerns in addition to others I had (the plot could have been tighter, the production quality wasn't as high as I was hoping, and some of the errors in the subtitles were distracting) were diminished, though, by the sheer enjoyment of seeing an international, fully subtitled Mormon film–and being in an audience of mixed native English and native Spanish speakers who were all able to fully participate as audience members. The film is half in English and half in Spanish, with both parts subtitled. The cast and crew included English speakers, Spanish speakers, and quite a few bilinguals, which provided an interesting challenge for all involved. In the Q&A after the screening, Jorge Ramirez Rivera said that he believed Melted Hearts is the first international Mormon film. He is hoping to distribute the film on DVD and possibly on some Latin websites. There were other films screened at the LDS Film Festival this year that had foreign flair, in particular Dave Boyle's films Big Dreams Little Tokyo and White on Rice, which I hope mark a new trend in LDS cinema. Jorge Ramirez Rivera's offering is an important step forward in that trend.

The 9th Annual LDS Film Festival will be held January 20-23 at the Scera Center in Orem. 

WHAT: Farewell To Eden, a national award winning play written by Mahonri Stewart and directed by Kathryn Laycock Little.

WHEN: January 15-25, 2010. Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays.

WHERE: The Provo Theatre (100 North, 105 East, Provo, UT 84604)

TICKETS: $12 for general public; $10 for students and seniors; and $9 for groups over 10 people. Tickets will be sold at the door.

Mahonri Stewart’s play Farewell To Eden is being performed for the first time since UVU’s premiere production of the show won national awards through the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival six years ago. The newly minted Zion Theatre Company is producing the revival on January 15-25, at the Provo Theatre (100 North, 105 East, Provo).

The play tells the story of Georgiana Highett and her siblings Thomas and Catherine, living in Victorian England, 1840. Georgiana is a high bred intellectual of the upper classes who has more than a dash of progressive, pre-feminist leanings, but also has the harsh views on class, typical of the time period. Georgiana’s world is safe and secure until the entry of two men in her life: her childhood friend Stephen Lockhart, and the mysterious Darrel Fredericks. At this eventful shift, the lives of her and her siblings are turned upside down. The style of the story follows very much in the tradition of classic story tellers such as Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens.

Read the full press release: http://www.motleyvision.org/2009/press-release-_farewell-to-eden_-at-the-provo-theatre/

The 24-Hour Filmmaking Marathon starts this Friday, January 15th!