Adam McLain

Adam McLain is a PhD student in the department of English at the University of Connecticut and an incoming 1L 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.