Stephenie Meyer's getting a lot of attention at BYU because she's getting a lot of attention nationwide from librarians, teachers, and teens. The vampire novel will never die, I think. She's a BYU alum and a Utah native (I *think*, on that last one. So you do a book tour. Being a YA author, she can talk about more than her books, though--she can talk about getting teens to read or any variety of teen issues, such as trusting beautiful strangers or whatever.
On Twilight, I have the ARC that I got from ALA a year ago, and I started it and it felt so incredibly slow that I put it down again. Yet it'd been getting all this hype on the teen library email list I'm on, and I'm not sure why. Finally in the last few months a few librarians are admitting they're not quite sure why everyone likes it so well--the main character, a girl, is awful passive when it comes to her relationship with the vampire.
If I ever finish it, I'll let you know. At this point, I have so many other books to read that it's at the bottom of the list.
Though I agree with Sigyn that from her website she sounds pretty cool. I've heard that her writing is tighter in the sequel.