Summer 2026 Magazine Launch Party: Ritual

Summer 2026 Magazine Launch Party: Ritual

The words and art in this issue show me that ritual can be created and adapted in response to our needs, desires, griefs, and healing. This issue teaches me about the diverse ways we as humans find meaning through action: moving our bodies, investigating our minds, and interacting with and noticing the world around us. Within these pages, you will find personal stories about finding healing rituals through leaving the familiar and discovering different cultures around the world. Our authors share their experiences with the naked saunas of Austria, the Hindu death rituals of India, and the oceans of Hawaii.  Some authors create their own rituals. In “Embodied,” Kristy Money creates dream rituals to connect to her sexuality. The raw imagery of Erin Matheson Ritchie’s poem, “Thy Faith Hath Made Thee,” beautifully describes her pa’s last few moments and funeral rituals. And in our flannel board feature, Lindsay Denton invites us to consider, through her experiences, how to create rituals in our own lives.  Some pieces find new relationships with ancient rituals. In “A Daughter, In Whom God is Well Pleased,” Shannon Soper reflects on her baptism, deriving new meaning from her childhood experience. In “Smoke & Ash,” Heather Sundahl plays with the ancient smudging ritual by “both honoring tradition and transgressing it” in her work as a therapist. And in the essay “Rituals,” Rocio Cisneros grieves the loss of her Mexican heritage as the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, but recognizes that when her “mother crossed the border . . . She crossed with traditions ingrained in every fiber of her being.” Rituals make us just as much as we make them. At their best, rituals can connect us to ourselves, to each other, to the divine, and to the earth. And at their worst, as we see in Christine’s essay, “Loved: From a Distance,” our unexamined practices can also wound us and those we love. The cover art of this issue, the basket holding an array of objects like a broken altar, depicts the daily, repetitive aspects of a human’s life. What is in your basket? On your altar? In your soul? Are they placed with intention? May this Exponent II issue guide you to the rituals that charm, delight, and heal you. May it uncover truths within yourself and bring intention into your life. As I ran the familiar route each morning while compiling this issue, the truth of my desire to leave some sort of handprint on the world was uncovered. May the art, essays, poems, and features within the pages of this ritual issue touch and transform you as they have me. Warmly, Natasha ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Spring 2026 Magazine Launch Party: Open Theme

Welcome to the spring issue of Exponent II! I am writing to you from a warm, early spring day, with sun and birdsong and squirrels in my trees. I am surrounded by evidence that my very short-lived winter (a result of global warming and living in the south) is turning over, that long daylight and green trees are returning to my yard. I am thinking again about renewal. Exponent II is renewing work for me. I marvel at the beautiful connections that form across these pages, between word and art, between one voice and another. I love watching how individual experiences, feelings, and thoughts weave together to form each issue, reflecting some of the beautiful, collective work of Mormon feminism. This open-themed issue of the magazine is full of organic connections and recurring themes. “Whose Body is This?” and “Undoing the Ideal: Stitched, Scarred, and Sacred” center women’s bodies, examining autonomy, agency, and the impact of harsh beauty standards. In Ocean Blue Taber’s work, My Body is a Temple, painted body parts are fragmented onto Deseret Industry-thrifted lampshades “as a way to take ownership of the vessel that gives me life.” Our featured artist, Anna Ream, discusses gendered expectations in her photograph series, Mormon BSAds. Here the BS stands for “benevolent sexism, the subtle, often well-intentioned ways patriarchal systems constrain women under the guise of protection and reverence.” Ream creates her own versions of the Mormonads that began in the 1970s. She explains, “Co-opting this visual language feels like standing up, naming it openly, and stripping it of its power.” In “Rumpspringa,” “Dear Mormon Parents,” and “Jane Mormons,” three writers unpick some of the complexities of carving out a life off the “straight and narrow;” they find peace, pain, and honesty, living in the “messy middle” and the margins of orthodox Mormonism. Creating and claiming space is also a key theme in the “Women’s Work” feature, where Natasha Rogers interviews Tamu Smith, co-founder of Sistas in Zion, a social media platform amplifying the lives and faith of Black Latter-day Saints. Tamue Smith describes the origins of Sistas in Zion: “So we created this space where we could be ourselves. . . . We gave ourselves permission to be who we are . . . ” In this interview, she also discusses her current and recent projects, passions, joy, and faith. Sorrow and depression also appear across many of these pieces. “Moving through Sorrow” by Tesia Tsai turns an honest eye to the ways depression can impact spirituality. In “Crossing the Finish Line: Why Our Sisters Need a Different Race,” Meg Rittmanic shares the brutal impact serving a mission had on her body and calls for a mission that honors menstruating bodies and mental health. “Come Jesus,” a poem by Elaine Turner, also wrestles with sorrow — the sorrow of observing “submission before a government that has become a god,” as the speaker examines photographs of the victims of mass deportation. As you move through the essays, poems, interviews, talks, paintings, collages, textile arts, and photographs that make up this issue, I hope you will find something new, maybe something you need this spring. May these pages surprise, comfort, teach, and expand us. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Spring 2026 Women's Work: Interview with Tamu Smith

Tamu Smith is a writer, activist, and co-founder of @sistasinzion, a social media platform amplifying the voices and lived experiences of Black Latter-day Saint women. Her work creates space for honest conversations about faith, history, race, and autonomy within the Church. In this Women's Work interview, the power of her voice  — shaped by friendship, faith, and gospel hip hop — calls us toward a more honest and unapologetic way of being. Read the interview in the Exponent II Spring 2026 issue! ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Winter 2026 Magazine Launch Party: Aging

Hear GayLynn talk about her striking coverart, Lovebirds, portions of the Letter from the Editor, and many writers, poets, and artists talk about their pieces published in the Winter 2026 "aging" issue. Witness the Exponent II community connect and make the Winter 2026 issue come alive. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Unpacking Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Feminism, Influence, and LDS Culture

This episode features a conversation led by Caroline Kline and Daniel Foster Smith, Dialogue Unbound hosts, with guests Katie Ludlow Rich and Liz Johnson from Exponent II. The title is: Unpacking Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Feminism, Influence, and LDS Culture ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.