Notes on Going Viral
Creative writer Isaac Richards had a question that lots of Latter-day Saint artists share: can a story built from distinctly Latter-day Saint experiences ever resonate with readers outside the faith?
He posed his question to fellow writer Darlene Young while at the Artists Residency at the Center together in 2024. Her sagacious answer: "It would have to be a VERY good story." For Isaac, the comment stuck.
The resulting essay, "Notes on Going Viral," published in Guernica earlier this year, traces the summer a viral video of Isaac speaking Telugu at a Yellowstone ice cream counter spun into international attention (ie, millions of Youtube views), backlash (politics, religious liberty, and crooked lawmakers), and a reckoning with his own mission in India (“perhaps I needed India much more than India needed me”).
It's an essay about identity, faith, and what happens when a personal story crosses into a culture it wasn't built for — proof, we think, that Darlene was exactly right.
