On January 15, 2015, Claremont Mormon Studies was proud to host Neylan McBaine as part of its lecture series sponsored by the Howard W. Hunter Foundation.

Title: From Football to Primary Songs: Gender in the Church Today

Neylan McBaine grew up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) in New York City and then attended Yale University. She currently lives with her husband and three young daughters.

As a writer, Neylan has been published in Newsweek, Meridian Magazine, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Segullah, Patheos.com, BustedHalo.com, the Washington Post’s On Faith religion blog, among others.Neylan’s work on women and Mormonism includes a FairMormon talk from 2012 that was widely distributed, and a roundtable podcast with leaders of key women’s organizations within Mormonism. Most recently, Neylan’s bookWomen at Church has been called “a monumental piece of work” and “a remarkable resource that belongs in every Latter-day Saint home.”

In January 2010, Neylan launched the Mormon Women Project, a digital library of interviews with LDS women from around the world, in an effort to emphasize the many ways that modern faithful women choose the right. Because of the strong examples of Mormon women she grew up with, including her own mother who was a professional opera singer, and because of her personal connection with many women who struggle to find their place within LDS culture, Neylan felt it was important to challenge the cultural stereotype with portraits of all kinds of righteous women. The site, which posts one interview a week with the help of dozens of volunteers, includes over 200 interviews with LDS women from 22 countries.

Neylan is also the author of a collection of personal essays, How To Be A Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman (2008) , and the editor of Sisters Abroad: Interviews from the Mormon Women Project (Patheos Press, 2013).