About Us
ABOUT US
Welcome to the Segullah blog, a forum for exploring ideas, sharing experiences, and highlighting individuals relating to the journal. Starting January 2013, the blog will start including excerpts from the journal, which is moving to an all-digital format.
The mission of Segullah is to encourage literary and artistic talent, provoke thought and promote greater understanding and faith among Latter-day Saint women. We encourage insightful writings which explore life’s richness and complexity while reflecting faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our aim is to highlight a variety of women’s perspectives within a framework of shared beliefs and values.
In Hebrew segullah signifies a cherished personal possession that is set apart and diligently cared for; it is a term the Lord has used with affection to describe His covenant blessings and responsibilities we receive in relationship with Him.
How do you pronounce Segullah? Say-Goo-Law. Place the stress on the first syllable (or on all three syllables equally). Segullah rhymes with Oo-la-la, write & draw, coup d’etat, Blanche DuBois, shock & awe, Lah-dee-dah, looky, ma!
SEGULLAH STAFF
Co-Editors-in-Chief: Shelah Mastny Miner and Sandra Clark Jergensen
Blog Editor: Kellie Purcill
Assitant Blog Editor: J. Hildie Westenhaver
Poetry Editor: Elizabeth Cranford Garcia
Prose Editor: Holly Baker
Webmaster: Rebecca P
Site design: Johnna Cornett
Founding Editor: Kathryn Soper
20 thoughts on “About Us”
When are the submissions for the 2014 Segullah writing contests due and what are the categories and rules?
Lori–Submissions for the 2014 writing contest are due December 31, 2014. The categories are nonfiction (personal essays, lyrical essays, memoirs, experimental essays), fiction, and poetry. You can find out more on our submissions page (segullah.org/submissions/).
Wonderful website. Hoping Jessie C. will contact me about her article, “Serving up General Conference for FHE.”
Linda,
Thanks for your comment! Jessie should be reaching out to you. Please contact us if you don’t hear anything.
I’m interested in submitting creative nonfiction work. Do you have a list of themes I should consult before I submit an essay?
Annie, the deadline for our contest is December 31st, so please aim for that and submit! The theme is completely open, as long as it’s in keeping with our mission statement mentioned above. You might want to check out this page with writing tips: segullah.org/?s=writing+tips. As far as themes go, the main thing I can tell you is what not to write about. One thing we used to get a lot (I have not read essay submissions for a while, so this may no longer be true) is reconciling motherhood/individual pursuits. This is probably because we have written a lot about it, but I would suggest that you avoid writing on it if you can unless you’ve got a very fresh, unique take.
Thought provoking comments. Thank you!
Is there a general contact email? My poem is in the most recent issue of the journal, and my name was spelled incorrectly—Tricia rather than Trisha. I would like to contact someone so that it can be corrected.
So glad I’ve found this site!
Please sign me up for all Segullah blog postings.
Thank you for pushing my envelope of thought and ponderings.
please notify me of new posts by email – thank you!
How do I subscribe?
I am very old now and want to get my poems submitted more places for Latter-Day Saints to read–or for anyone .Often times my religion “shows”, but I do a lot of poetry about nature and what it leads me to write about attitudes and struggles and beauty/similarities of any kind. I had two poems requested from me to be in the Utah State Poetry Society Anthology for 2015. That thrilled me, because my long- dead older sister was a poet and in many anthologies, but she died in 2009 [Belle de Jong Van Wagenen]. My middle sister, Nola de Jong Sullivan just died a month ago at age 90, and she was a fabulous watercolor painter who had studied and taught all over the US and used teaching painting as art therapy for many, many grateful people. I followed her in watercolor and have exhibited widely, but have been writing poetry since age four. I had many childhood diseases which my mother was quarantined in part of our house with me for weeks in the 1930s from kindergarten until fourth grade, and then in the middle of that year my mother suddenly died. It was a gigantic blow to our whole family. My father (thank goodness) refused to remarry. I was married at almost 22 and was so grateful I could be close to him and traveled on many continents and went to banquets and conventions with him all through high school and college. I lived in Brazil with him and taught as he did for the US State Department many thousands of miles away. I had the huge blessing of having “”a mother that read to me” so much poetry, much of what I could not even understand, but it was so musical. . . .such beauty! Like the sounds of four languages I worked on; and in high school my father urged me on in piano on his carved baby-grand. I hardly studied as a teen because I would rather , in my lonely house, practice new pieces on the piano four and five hours a day. My teens were full of artistic projects of all kinds as well as keeping house for Papa, but that did not dampen my passionate teen loves that came and went as I knew wonderful young men. I was always under the Lord’s care, and have had 64 years of marital BLISS as we lived in so many different places.
I want to write a piece about my granddaughter in Tennessee, an honored graduate from a Southern college who had many boy friends but turned three down for marriage. At age 26 she decided she was “ready” to go to the temple and progress with her endowments ( she didn’t know that I had done the same thing at 20, with the blessing of my father) as she had her father’s encouragement. Am I too old ???to submit anything to your wonderful website—at 85! I still feel like 17 in my heart! I am writing poetry constantly now and for all previous years of my life through marriage. I have had a slow but steady publishing of poems for many decades. My dear husband is a renowned missionary and writer with degrees in Ancient History and New Testament Greek–but also an expert on Joseph Smith, .a loved teacher in BYU’s Religion Dept. This has enriched our life with four children, now all married. My going to school for credit ended in my own PhD in 1992 and has been a tremendous joy.
segullah.org has potential, you can make your page go viral easily
using one tricky method. Just type in google:
Kelashy’s Method To Go Viral
Hi, would it be possible for me to translate one of your articles into Japaneses and share it with our Japanese Church members? Of course, we will fully attribute it to you.
Of course.