Orson Scott Card - Career

Career

Card began his writing career primarily as a poet, studying with Clinton F. Larson at Brigham Young University. During his studies as a theater major, he began "doctoring" scripts, adapting fiction for readers theater production, and finally writing his own one-act and full-length plays, several of which were produced by faculty directors at BYU. He also explored fiction writing, beginning with stories that eventually evolved into The Worthing Saga.

After returning to Provo, Utah from his LDS mission in Brazil, Card started the Utah Valley Repertory Theatre Company, which for two summers produced plays at "the Castle", a Depression-era outdoor amphitheater behind the state mental hospital in Provo; his company's were the first plays ever produced there. Meanwhile, he took part-time employment as a proofreader at BYU Press, then made the jump to full-time employment as a copy editor. In 1976, in the midst of a paid acting gig in the Church's musical celebrating America's Bicentennial, he secured employment as an assistant editor at the Church's official magazine, Ensign, and moved to Salt Lake City. It was while working at Ensign that Card published his first piece of fiction. His short story "Gert Fram" appeared in the July 1977 fine arts issue of that magazine under the pseudonym Byron Walley.