Adam McLain

Adam McLain is a PhD candidate in the department of English at the University of Connecticut and a JD candidate at UConn Law. He researches and writes on dystopian literature, legal theory, and sexual justice. He has a BA in English, editing, and women’s studies from Brigham Young University, a master of theological studies, emphasizing in women, gender, sexuality, and religion, from Harvard University, and a MA in English from the University of Connecticut.

Adam McLain 2/26/21 Adam McLain 2/26/21

Published: Reviews of She-Ra and Apocalypse Nyx

In February, the SFRA Review published Volume 51, number 1, which contains two of my reviews in it.

Adam McLain 3/30/20 Adam McLain 3/30/20

Published: Review of Is He Nuts?

I read Is He Nuts? Why a Gay Man Would Become a Member of the Church of Jesus Christ recently and wrote a review that the Association for Mormon Letters picked up.

Adam McLain 1/19/20 Adam McLain 1/19/20

Of Testimony, Revelation, and Story: The Empty Church and the First Vision

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to read The Empty Church: Essays and Poetry on a Mormon Sabbatical by Mette Ivie Harrison. This book was beautiful, personal, and wonderful. It was enlightening to read someone going through a faith transition and hear her candid take on the Church, on her own faith, and on her own journey. This wasn’t a story distilled to myth that is shared over the pulpit; it was an individual’s personal interaction with deity written on the page, stark and glowing.

Adam McLain 1/27/19 Adam McLain 1/27/19

Review: The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill

Veiled in the comfort of a child’s tale, Kelly Barnhill spins a story of gender and life, power and knowledge, memory and perception, and most importantly, family, both given and found.

Adam McLain 1/15/19 Adam McLain 1/15/19

Review: Forever Elle, by Heather Chapman

With daring charm and grit, Heather Chapman weaves a tale of many forms of love—familial and romantic—in this tender story about Elle’s growth into a lady—even as the text itself questions what exactly a “lady” is and can be.

Essaying; or, Why I Blog

To Think

Writing is a spiritual experience. It is a movement toward greater understanding of myself and the world around me. It is a journey toward apotheosis as I come to know my humanity better through the words I write. I write because it allows me to ruminate on a subject, not coming to a definitive conclusion, but rather opening the door to understanding, even in just a little way, the simple complexity and complex simplicity of the universe that surrounds us.

To Share

Writing is a communal experience. It is meant to communicate thoughts across words in order to form other thoughts in other beings. Those thoughts do not come perfectly thought-for-thought, word-for-word, but in their imperfection, there is a connection, a community that is formed between you and me. A joining. A unity.

To Experience

Writing is an experience. Taking the time to consider something and then to write about it allows one to experience and re-experience an event, a moment, a text.