Ally: Carol Lynn Pearson

Carol Lynn Pearson is one of the bestknown and best-loved Latter-day Saint literary authors. She writes in a wide variety of genres, including poetry, theater, novel, and non-fiction. She graduated from Brigham Young University with an MA in theatre, taught for a time at Snow College and BYU, and was then hired by the BYU motion picture studio to write educational and religious screenplays.

Borrowing two thousand dollars, her husband Gerald created a company called “Trilogy Arts” and published her first book of poetry, called Beginnings in 1968. This work was a great success, and led to a series of poetry collections, including The Search, The Growing Season, A Widening View, I Can’t Stop Smiling, and Women I Have Known and Been.

She produced numerous educational motion pictures, including the wellknown Cipher in the Snow (1973), as well as many plays and musicals. The musicals include the frontier-era The Order is Love (1971), the Godspell-like My Turn on Earth (1977), and The Dance (1981), which was later adapted into a feature film. She both wrote and performed over 300 times a one-woman play, Mother Wove the Morning (1989)

In 1986 Random House published her memoir Goodbye, I Love You, which centered on the story of her marriage to Gerald, his homosexuality, their divorce, and his death from AIDS some years later.

“This book was about our 12-year Mormon temple marriage, our four children, our divorce, our ongoing friendship, and my caring for him in my home as he died of AIDS,” she wrote. “This book took me on a national tour with appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America, and many other major talk shows, as well as a feature in People Magazine. For numerous people, this book opened up the conversation on homosexuality.”

Twenty years later, she published No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones, a powerful look at LGBT issues in the Mormon community in the first years of the 21st century.

“Tragic goodbyes are still being said: to suicide, ill-fated marriages and family alienation,” she said. “But it also has an abundance of positive stories, families letting nothing come between them and their gay loved ones. This book has saved lives and changed the hearts of family members and church leaders.”

A stage play written for Plan-B Theatre Company that tells the story of a Mormon couple dealing with the suicide of their gay son is Facing East. The scene is the cemetery directly after the funeral, with the parents trying to understand. Suddenly someone arrives whom they have never met — Marcus, their son’s deeply-loved partner. Tension turns into listening, and understanding begins. “Best Play” award by the Deseret News, followed by a limited Off-Broadway run.

Carol Lynn is the mother of four grown children, and now lives in Walnut Creek, California.