By Shaun T. Griffin
This morning, under warm sun, I weeded the roots of lavender, Chinese poppies, and the locust, an activity so benign it hardly merits mention, except of course, if it is aborted by the unwanted hands of justice. Almost every other week I go to the medium security prison to teach a poetry workshop.
Read MoreBy David Durham
When I decided to return to an academic career (after several years of being a full-time writer), I knew a job search could result in an offer anywhere in the country. A worrying thought. When I saw the University of Nevada, Reno’s (UNR) advertisement for a fiction faculty member to join the relatively new MFA program I knew I’d found my hoped-for, go-to destination.
Read MoreBy Staff of Nevada Humanities
Did you know that Nevada Humanities has an incredible educational and reference tool that delves into Nevada’s culture, history, and heritage? The Online Nevada Encyclopedia (ONE), which has been active since 2006, is a free, online resource that is available to anyone who is interested in learning more about the Silver State.
Read MoreBy Joanne Mallari
During National Poetry Month, I met Stephanie Gibson, who is a program manager at Nevada Humanities. When Stephanie invited me to curate a panel for the 2019 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl, she asked me this question: How do you see poetry functioning out in the world?
Read MoreBy Angela M. Brommel
You can’t explain to friends from home how the desert makes it better, but you try:
Imagine a heat so dry that it presses down into the earth, releasing its scent so that it takes on the comforting smell of clay pots in your grandmother’s kitchen when you were a child,
Read MoreBy Kimberly Roberts
The invention of the automobile changed how Americans interacted with their landscape. Once confined to railroad tracks and wagon roads, the great American expanse was now open and available, and exploring by car signified a new freedom for those who could afford it.
Read MoreBy Bruce Isaacson
Even in the shadow of Casinosaurus
Life springs irrepressible from the sands
Artists, poets, lovers, children
Dream of the seventh gold city...
Read MoreBy Christina Barr
The seeds of Great Basin Young Chautauqua began in 1992 at the urging of a group of young people who saw their parents enjoying Nevada Humanities' newly formed Great Basin Chautauqua festival. Recognizing the program's value for young people, Nevada Humanities created the concept of Young Chautauqua and launched the Great Basin Young Chautauqua program in 1993.
Read MoreBy Kelli Luchs and Derek Weis
The recent designation of neon as Nevada’s official state element ensures that neon and Las Vegas will be forever linked. It was thus auspicious timing for the Neon Museum and the Las Vegas News Bureau to join forces to highlight some of the most iconic Las Vegas signs in their exhibit Then and Now: The Neon Boneyard,
Read MoreBy Deon Reynolds
A few years back, my wife Trish and I were commissioned to create several large-scale wheat paste murals for the Western Folklife Center’s National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada … we cooked up our own flour and water mixture to make the glue, which is applied to the wall, as well as over the art work itself. The images were printed on 24-inch-wide rolls of light-weight plotter paper.
Read MoreBy Christopher Daniels
Author Barry Lopez states “the only thing holding us together are stories and compassion.” I love stories of all genres and media. I live for terrible made-for-TV movies, binge on gripping Netflix dramas, have a stacks of books on my nightstands (that I vow I am going to read before purchasing more new books), gleefully research the mythologies of various world wisdom traditions, and watch, with wide-eyed wonder, the magic of live theatre.
Read MoreBy Frank X. Mullen
If you want to get to know someone well, walk a mile in their shoes, so the saying goes.
The scholars in the Nevada Humanities Great Basin Young Chautauqua program go further than a mere mile: for a time, they inhabit historical characters from the inside out. It’s scholarship as performance. They act— then react— to an audience.
Read MoreBy Kelbey Hilliard
I was never a kid who was afraid of the spotlight. My whole life, I’ve always been happy to take center stage and put on a show. I was shy meeting new people, and still can be, but always dreamed of performing one day in a huge, bright theatre.
Read MoreBy Max Stone
It’s a not-so-well-kept secret that Reno is home to a burgeoning literary community. As evidenced by the number of people who were packed into the community’s home base of sorts, Sundance Books and Music, on April 25, 2019 for the finale of the National Poetry Month Reading Series.
Read MoreBy Gavin Markovic
This letter is one of the 2019 “Letters About Literature” winners for the state of Nevada.
The right book can change your life. It happened to me. During seventh grade, I was to read a coming-of-age novel and present on the book and its author to my English class. My mom suggested I read her favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Read MoreBy Nikki Florio
The Great Pollen Nation
The Pollen Nation is a collective of thousands of species of winged and terrestrial insects, birds, bats, and small mammals. These animals have evolved with flowering plants in ecosystems throughout our planet. Without them, we will be left with only wind pollinated plants.
Personal Space: Stereoscopic Nevada has been installed for a month now at the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery in Las Vegas. The exhibition has been a great success with over 450 guests having come through. But the most satisfying part of it has been the high level of engagement.
Read MoreBy Jennifer Battisti
Ascending takes effort.
My hamstrings protest; dizzy spells,
a cold sharp ache coiling in my ears,
my mind like an open door— all the flies let in, the bodies below, still
waiting on warm asphalt.
Read MoreBy Staff of Nevada Humanities
Congratulations to all of our 2019 Nevada Humanities awardees who will be honored at the Nevada Humanities Award Ceremony tonight in Reno.
Read MoreBy Fawn Douglas
I remember the late ‘80s in Las Vegas. The city of Las Vegas was growing, and we walked in areas that were on the edge of development. We walked through the dirt side of Craig Road, near the old Craig Ranch in North Las Vegas.
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