Today we turn the tables on popular podcast hosts Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward to interview them about their new book, At Last She Said It: Honest Conversations About Faith, Church, And Everything in Between. You may be familiar with their At Last She Said It podcast, and how for the past five years they have helped listeners grappling with their faith within and without the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their podcast has been a soft place to land for many, helping listeners know they are not alone. Signature’s Beth Brumer Reeve explores how Hinckley and Winward are even more vulnerable in their book and how their stories help anyone trying to navigate what can be a fraught journey within a high-demand and patriarchal religion.

SUSAN M. HINCKLEY is a storyteller in words and pictures. A longtime exhibitor with the American Craft Council, her art is held in private collections across the U.S. She’ll travel any distance for good green chile or a glimpse of her grandkids, splitting her time between the southwest and midwest. Wherever she is, her heart roams the desert—preferably in a fast convertible.

CYNTHIA WINWARD makes her home in Provo, Utah although she will always be a California girl. Before pouring all her creative energy into the At Last She Said It podcast, she was the owner of an online embroidery business. Her kitchen is her happy place where she enjoys making the world's greatest red chile enchiladas. She is enjoying the good life as an empty nester with her husband Paul.

Find them online on Instagram @atlastshesaidit

Author and poet Steven L. Peck joins Signature marketing manager Beth Brumer Reeve in an interview about his new book of poetry, Experiments in the Fading Light. Listen as Steven reads some of his favorites from this collection and shares how he got in trouble at school for reading so much during class, which we believe helped him become an amazing writer.

An award-winning novelist, short-story writer, and poet, Steven L. Peck is unusual in that he is also a working scientist who has published dozens of papers on evolutionary ecology and the philosophy of science. His worldwide studies of ecologies have given him a keen understanding of the dangers and troubles we face as a species and as individually embodied beings. He recently began to formally study soundscapes, especially the songs of our avian friends. His poetry reflects on his observations as he explores the wonders of this planet and our place in a complex world. He is an ecology professor at Brigham Young University, where he studies the ecology of birds and insects. He has published over fifty scientific articles on evolutionary ecology and the philosophy of biology.

You can find Steven on Instagram @sciencehoroscope.

Authors McArthur Krishna and Anne Pimentel sat down with Signature Books director Barbara Jones Brown to talk about the impetus behind their new book Changemakers: Women Who Boldly Built Zion. At a time when women are wondering if they matter at church, this book offers a resounding, “Yes!” Stories curated from scripture and global history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints show that women’s voices are needed and have definitively changed the landscape of the faith. Women have played a vital role in growing the worldwide church, with their ideas shaping its structure, policy, and culture. Listen in for a refreshing perspective on why women matter more than ever.

McArthur Krishna graduated from BYU with both an undergraduate and master’s degree. She co-owned an award-winning ideas marketing firm for a decade until she retired, got married, and moved to India. Over eight years she has written nineteen books, including A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother and A Boy’s Guide to Heavenly Mother. Along the way she has coordinated some of the first art featuring women to be hung in the LDS Conference Center, commissioned and curated the first art show focused on Heavenly Mother with global artists, and her own art was selected for the Church’s International Art competition.

Anne Pimentel is a passionate advocate for people who find themselves on the margins of society, church, or life. She enjoys reading and learning about other cultures and perspectives. She works to widen the circle and amplify the voices of those who are often ignored. She is one of the founders of Meetinghouse Mosaic, an organization working to diversify Christian art. She assisted in curating a successful art show with the organization that focused on historically accurate and cultural depictions of Christ. Anne consistently shares about our Heavenly Mother, women's rights and voices, and social justice work on her social media account, The Vision Beautiful.

You can find both McArthur and Anne on Instagram:

@mcarthurkrishna_creates

@the.vision.beautiful

Nationally acclaimed author and journalist Alex Beam joins marketing specialist Beth Brumer-Reeve to talk about his new biography, Wallace Stegner: Dean Of Western Writers.

Stegner had a prolific career that spanned half a century, including fourteen novels and seventeen works of nonfiction. He won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for his 1972 book Angle of Repose, which later became embroiled in accusations of plagiarism.

Beam speaks to the controversy surrounding Stegner, his years growing up with a father who chased riches, and the sense of belonging he felt among the Mormons after his family moved to Salt Lake City in the 1920s.

Alex Beam has written two novels and seven works of nonfiction, two of them New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In 2014, he published American Crucifixion, a narrative history of the assassination of Joseph Smith, "an excellent book about the life and death of an utterly uncategorizable man," according to the Wall Street Journal.

A longtime columnist for The Boston Globe, Beam lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.

Author and BYU history professor Ignacio M. Garcia and Signature Books editorial manager John Hatch cover a lot of ground while discussing Garcia's new biography, Eduardo Balderas: Father of Church Translation, 1907-1989.

Balderas was a child refugee from Mexico whose family came to live in Texas in the 1900s. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, served a mission, became a branch president, and began translating for the church. Not only did he translate the Pearl of Great Price, the Doctrine and Covenants, Jesus the Christ, church manuals, and the temple ceremony, into Spanish, he also helped establish what became the church's Translation Department today.

Listen in and discover more about Balderas and how he created space for his Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters within the church that he found belonging in.

In this moving and powerful conversation, authors Laurie Lee Hall and Nathan Kitchen share the genesis of their new memoirs, Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman and The Boughs of Love: Navigating the Queer Latter-day Saint Experience During an Ongoing Restoration.

They speak to the dominant narratives found in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regarding Queer issues, and how they reclaimed their own narratives.

Both authors are on Instagram @laurieleehall and @nathankitchen.

Join memoirist Laurie Lee Hall and Signature Books Director Barbara Jones Brown for this fascinating interview based on Laurie’s new memoir, Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest To My Life As A Woman.

Laurie’s growing-up years were defined by the conflict between her physical condition as a boy and her inherent identity as a girl. Unable to explain or resolve her gender dysphoria, she committed to living her adult life as a male. She joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and became chief architect of its temples, a stake president, and a parent of five children before she finally embraced her true identity and gradually transitioned to living full-time as a woman. Though she wanted to stay on as a church architect and a faithful church member, her stake president—and former counselor—excommunicated her following her gender transition. In this episode, Laurie shares her story and reads excerpts from her compelling new memoir.

"In what novelist John Gardner referred to as 'the vivid and continuous fictional dream,' Mary Clyde writes two stories of alternate realities with the same or similar characters. Here, fugue-like, a post-apocalyptic world in the Arizona desert informs, undercuts, reiterates, and ultimately harmonizes with a family struggling to tend to a son and brother hospitalized with traumatic brain injury. Or is it the other way around? Winner of the 1999 Flannery O'Connor Award for her collection, Survival Rates, Clyde presents life as blistered and harrowing but making way for something utterly new and unknown."

—David Pace, author of American Trinity and Other Stories from the Mormon Corridor

Author Mary Clyde talks with marketing specialist Beth Brumer Reeve about how Journeys from a Desert Road came to life, how her kids always talking about a zombie apocalypse informed her story, and why she doesn't believe in writing at 5:00 a.m.

Find out more about her book here: https://www.signaturebooks.com/books/p/journeys-from-a-desert-road