What Translation Teaches Us

By Wendy Chen

Growing up in a bilingual Chinese American household, I was a translator long before I called myself one. Daily acts of translation shaped my understanding of language and transformed my approach toward my own writing.

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Alyda Dickens
Communicating Risk about Heat and Wildfire Smoke in Nevada

By Ashley Payette

Due to climate change, high temperatures and wildfire smoke have increased in intensity across Nevada. Communities need to be informed of these events so they may take action to protect themselves. To learn how the risks of heat and wildfire smoke are communicated, with the public, I talked with Kristin VanderMolen, assistant research professor at the Desert Research Institute.

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Ashley Payette
Climate Change from a Photographer’s Lens

By Ashley Payette

Nevada is filled with tall mountains shifting into low valleys, and pretty dull hues spotted with bright cities and small towns. This landscape is constantly changing, with much of it altered at the hands of humanity. Scott Hinton is a photographer who offered me insight into how climate ebbs and landscapes flow.

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Ashley Payette
Tribes Have Trouble Accessing Water in the West

By Ashley Payette

As temperatures in southern Nevada rise, the water levels in Lake Mead fall. Droughts put our water, and the people who rely on it, at risk. To further understand the impact of drought on Nevada and surrounding regions, I spoke with Elizabeth Koebele, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

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Ashley Payette
York Fire Reflections

By Alina Lindquist

The work displayed in Avi Kwa Ame: Between Presence and Protection celebrates the beautiful natural environment of Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. One prominent feature of this landscape is the Joshua tree, which serves as an indicator species of the Mojave Desert and is one of my favorite plants in this region.

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Ashley Payette
Intentional Community-Making: The Humanities in Times of Crisis

By Jeremy Reed

What are we going to do? What am I going do? I have been asking myself these questions – expressed with varying degrees of panic and anxiety – on a near daily basis for the past few months. As a recent transplant to the Las Vegas area, I have been grappling with the challenges of getting to know new spaces and new communities as well as the mounting threats to the work that I do in the public humanities.

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George Tsz-Kwan Lam
Reading Epitaphs; Writing Eulogies

By Kahlo R. F. Smith

My earliest playground memories are set in cemeteries, chasing my brother around family plots and peering through each crypt’s ornate grating. Dad hoped he could keep us from fearing death by making cemeteries sites of joy.

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George Tsz-Kwan Lam
Because They Are People

By Shaun T. Griffin

October 2024. This preamble is for the scores of men who have been in the Razor Wire Poetry Workshop which, for over three decades, saved lives, kept them out of prison, gave voice to many poets, and led to countless friendships that kept me returning to teach poetry.

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George Tsz-Kwan Lam