BEST ESSAYS, ASSOCIATION FOR MORMON LETTERS

If people can "power lunch," how about making room in the work day for a "power-nap"? If women receive flowers in church on Mother's Day, should men receive something along the lines of a garden tool on Father's Day? In the tradition of Garrison Keillor, Elouise Bell tackles timely questions in a way that both celebrates and critiques her culture.

Delighting readers of network magazine and the Salt Lake Tribune for years, she has compiled for the benefit of readers everywhere twenty-five of her most memorable articles—including "Zzzzzuchini"; "Christmyths"; "What Makes Botticelli Blush?" and her most popular essay, "The Meeting," in which gender roles are reversed in an LDS worship service. As charming and light-hearted as these are, there is an implied caveat: anyone who cannot visualize bishops in high heels, house husbands, or a Mormon Democratic caucus should seek their razor-sharp social commentary elsewhere.

Elouise Bell is a retired professor of English and associate dean of General and Honors Education at Brigham Young University. She is the author of Only When I Laugh, editor of Will I Ever Forget This Day? Excerpts from the Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson, and a columnist for network magazine—for which she received an award for excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists—and for The Salt Lake Tribune. She is a contributor to Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems and The Wilderness of Faith: Essays on Contemporary Mormon Thought. She lives in Orem, Utah.