Signature Books

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Signature Books is a Mormon press started in 1980 by Scott Kenney and a few investors.

[edit] History

In the late 1970s, Scott Kenney decided there needed to be a Mormon press that didn’t have political ties to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in 1980 he and a few investors created Signature Books and in 1981 published its first book, Saintspeak by Orson Scott Card. Since 1981 Signature Books has published about 300 books. Several of these have won awards from the Association for Mormon Letters, the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Mormon History Association, the Mountain West Center for Western Studies, and the Utah Center for the Book.

Among those present at Signature Books inception were Lavina Fielding Anderson, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Davis Bitton, Eugene E. Campbell, Orson Scott Card, Steven L. Christensen, Everett L. Cooley, Scott G. Kenney, David Lisonbee, Jay Parry, D. Michael Quinn, Allen Dale Roberts, George D. Smith, and Richard S. Van Wagoner. They were later joined by (directors) Gary James Bergera, Lisa Orme Bickmore, Martha Sonntag Bradley, Michael W. Homer, Brigham D. Madsen, Ron Priddis, John Sillito, and Susan Staker. In addition, its past and present employees, without whom Signature would not be where it is today, include the following individuals: Ian Barber, Mary Brockert, Brent Corcoran, Melody Dean, Connie Disney, Mary Ann Flandro, Jani Fleet, Deborah Hirth, Greg Jones, Keiko Fukushima Jones, Tom Kimball, Douglas McGrory, and Boyd Payne.

[edit] Present

Currently based in Salt Lake City, Signature Books produces from eight to ten books a year, ranging in topics of western and Mormon history, fiction, essay, humor and art. This includes the diaries of Mormon hierarchal leaders such as Joseph Smith, William Clayton, Heber C. Kimball, Willford Woodruff, L. John Nuttle, Anthon H. Lund, John Henry Smith, Rudger Clawson, B. H. Roberts and Reed Smoot. Noted studies of the best early Mormon theologians such as James E. Talmage, B. H. Roberts, Orson Pratt, Parley P. Pratt, Brigham Young, John Widtsoe and award winning biographies of significant early Mormons such as, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Willford Woodruff, John Taylor and thirty three of the plural wives of Joseph Smith.