Nevada Wanderings
By Morgan Jerkins
When I got the email that my second book, Wandering in Strange Lands, was a read for the Nevada Humanities’ Nevada Reads program, I was delighted. I hadn’t been to Nevada in over five years since The Believer Festival in 2018 ,and I’d been thinking of this special desert ever since. My arrival into Nevada felt like a long voyage. Earlier that day, I had to take two trains to get from my Harlem apartment to Princeton University to teach. Immediately afterwards, I had to take a train to Newark airport followed by two flights to go to Reno. By the time I checked into my hotel only a half hour or so before midnight, I had only enough energy to buy some snacks at a corner store and take a bath as I allowed the soft glow of the city lights to envelop me into a deep slumber.
Photo by Bridget Lera/Nevada Humanities.
This was going to be a whirlwind of a trip. First, a small, intimate coffee hour where I spoke candidly about my journalism and publishing career to an audience at the University of Nevada, Reno, lunch, a book reading and book signing at Sundance Books and Music in Reno, then dinner. Early the next morning, I’d fly to Las Vegas where I’d have some of the best spaghetti I’ve ever have in my life at Esther’s Kitchen. My afternoon was spent in an engaging conversation with Claytee White, who is the inaugural director of the Oral History Research Center for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries and a founder of the Las Vegas Black Historical Society, at The Writers’ Block bookstore in Las Vegas.
I loved my time in Nevada. I was asked some pretty thoughtful, scholarly, and interesting questions. My book has been out for over three years, and I thought I’ve heard the gamut of inquiries until I came to this state. I truly hope that this won’t be my last visit.
Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller This Will Be Undoing, as well as the critically acclaimed books, Wandering In Strange Lands and Caul Baby. She holds a Bachelor’s in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Jerkins is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Leader in Media alumna, a 2021 ASME Next recipient for her literary initiative at Medium’s ZORA, and an ASME Award winner for co-editing a special issue on the 10th anniversary of Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter movement for New York Magazine.
Her short-form work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, ELLE, Vogue, and The Atlantic, among many other publications. She’s held professorships at Pacific University, Leipzig University in Germany, Columbia University, and the New School. She currently teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
Double Down blogger photo courtsey of Morgan Jerkins.