FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: William Shunn
Email: bill🙑shunn⚬net
Web: www.shunn.net, www.missionaryman.net
"Mormon Terrorist" to Read from Memoir July 17th in NYC
NEW YORK CITY--July 3rd, 2002--Nebula Award-nominated author William Shunn will read from his unpublished memoir Missionary Man at the legendary KGB literary bar in Manhattan on Wednesday, July 17th, at 7:00 pm.
Missionary Man is the first insider account of the lives of Mormon missionaries written for a general audience. Mr. Shunn, like most young Mormon men, was sent by his church on an ascetic two-year quest for converts at the age of 19. He was given no say in his destination: Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Shunn's tenure as a missionary was nearly cut short when he was arrested and tried on terrorism-related charges in 1987, the incident that gives Missionary Man its backbone. A fellow missionary was about to go AWOL when Shunn phoned in an anonymous bomb threat to prevent the youth's plane from departing on schedule. After beating a hijacking charge in connection with the incident, Shunn pled guilty to public mischief. He is not permitted to reenter Canada.
A tough but refreshing dissection of the making of religious fanatics, Missionary Man braids Shunn's adventures together with those of Joseph Smith, Mormonism's charismatic founder, who was murdered at the hands of an angry mob in 1844. It also examines some of the stranger and lesser-known aspects of Mormon theology, but in the end is less a debunking than a bittersweet farewell to those beliefs.
The book is a departure for Mr. Shunn, who is known primarily for his science fiction. His stories began appearing in 1993 in such periodicals as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Science Fiction Age, and garnered increasing acclaim throughout the Nineties.
In 2000, his novelette "Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites," set in his Netherheim universe, appeared in the anthology Vanishing Acts (Ellen Datlow ed., Tor Books, New York, NY). The story was nominated earlier this year for the prestigious Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Mr. Shunn, a native of Utah, has lived in New York City since 1995--the same time that he broke with the Mormon church. Ironically for an accused terrorist, he achieved a small amount of notoriety on September 11, 2001, by creating the first online "survivor registry," a Web site where New Yorkers could report to friends and relatives around the world that they were okay.
July 17th will mark Shunn's first reading at KGB, favorite haunt of New York's downtown literary crowd. He appears as part of the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series, a monthly event curated by Terry Bisson and Ellen Datlow. Also scheduled that evening is China Miéville, author of The Scar and Perdido Street Station. KGB is located at 85 East 4th Street in Manhattan's East Village, between Second Avenue and Bowery.
Mr. Shunn is represented by Shawna McCarthy, of the McCarthy Agency, LLC. He is now completing work on his first novel, Silvertide.
For more information, contact William Shunn by email at bill🙑shunn⚬net, or visit www.shunn.net and www.missionaryman.net.
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