Segullah Journal

ARMED WITH THE BROOM and dustpan, I head for the stairs. Hurry. Girls’ Squad is almost over. I know they’ll all stay longer than they should if they don’t think the job is done. This is our third year doing Girls’ Squad. An ambitious, creative friend found the idea in the Ensign and recruited four of us. We [...]

Co-Winner, Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest A STEALTH SNOWFALL has coated the world overnight and muted the usual traffic noises, allowing us to sleep in a bit too late on a Sunday morning. My three sons bring news of the snow as they pile into our bed and climb over us to open the blinds. We [...]

SOMETIMES I LOOK AT MY HUSBAND and I think about him dying. I really don’t want to think about such a thing, but the thought crosses my mind a few times a week. I can be driving to the grocery store when I pass a tree with a big yellow ribbon tied around its trunk, and [...]

Honorable Mention, Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest I AM IMMEDIATELY SUSPICIOUS about the origins of the mountain of produce my sister has left for me on the countertop. It is too much food, and from the packaging I know it cost too much money. A quick look at the labels tells me the harvest is from the [...]

AS AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD I was extremely excited to have a room of my own. But it was not like other rooms. It was an attic. Twenty-foot vaulted ceilings, exposed wooden beams, spiderwebs, protruding nails, hardwood floors, and a column of brick created an exciting atmosphere. But to make my room even more amazing, my dad [...]

I AM THAT GIRL. A cliché. A walking stereotype. I am a young, Mormon mommy. You know, the one with three kids who usually wears a jean skirt and button-down shirt that sits behind you in Relief Society. I also take a little white pill every morning to keep the crazies at bay. Yes, I [...]

IT WAS MY LAST WEEK on study abroad in England, and as with the last of anything, I wanted to make it count. Therefore I was determined to enjoy the play we were seeing at the National Theatre in London, A Matter of Life and Death, even though the plot summary sounded dubious to me—“It [...]

Roads no longer merely lead to places; they are places. —John Brinkerhoff Jackson, landscape historian. McCAMMON, IDAHO, IS 1.4 SQUARE MILES, a dot so mere on the map that it’s easily missed beneath the bold font declaring the location of Bannock County’s other, far more prominent town, Pocatello. I’d certainly never heard of McCammon before, [...]

Co‑Winner, Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest EVERY MORNING and every evening, I walk alone through the darkened halls of one of the most famous museums in the world. The cultural collection here is one of the world’s largest, and millions of visitors walk these halls each year in the daylight hours. Every day, they press up [...]

First Place Winner, Poetry Contest Luke 1:25 Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men. He wrote, “My prayer was heard!” I thought,       Which one? Can faithless prayer be answered? Or do old prayers carry old faith’s fervency, like remnant [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest I peered into a puddle and saw the sky, as if I had lain on the pavement and looked up through the spreading fingers of the trees. Gazing into the sheen of the sidewalk, I watched the heavens and saw them tremble at my passing. Emily Summerhays lives in New York [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. (Gen. 3:20) I. Laurel tossed, we leave ourselves lost as we are the wanton world our choice. We ate to know, we ache now to be known as we are. Moving, a glance over our slumped [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest Do not steal my fire and ice, make null my trial, void it with another name than pain. The cut of a blade opening to bright red is revelation, not in later epiphany, but present sense, the now of living, now of lava coursing down my throat to scorch my inside [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest she was (young) driving safely home after work and realized (strange) that she was going (instead of East) West, and slowed the car into a parking (unused)-lot to turn around. Finding (somehow) herself on the wrong (the passenger) side of the car and starting to move back she, hearing mother’s voice, [...]