By Zeb Hogan and Stefan Lovgren
The collaboration that led to our book—Chasing Giants: In Search of the World’s Largest Freshwater Fish—goes back almost two decades. We first met in 2006 in Cambodia to start a National Geographic story series on The Megafishes Project, which was Zeb’s quest to find, study, and protect the largest freshwater fish species around the world.
Read MoreBy Simon Hunt and Heather Lang-Cassera
Via the Humanities at Play virtual series, Nevada Humanities Program Manager Kathleen Kuo recently chatted with authors Simon Hunt and Heather Lang-Cassera about collaborative poetry. They explored the benefits and challenges of writing poems with other people. During the session, they compiled lines of verse from participants to create a collaborative poem!
Read MoreBy Staff of Nevada Humanities
Visitors to the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery in Las Vegas this month will get behind-the-curtain views of rare drawings and designs created for an icon of Las Vegas—the showgirl.
Read MoreBy Valerie P. Cohen
Valerie Cohen created the cover art for the 2023 Nevada Humanities’ Nevada Day card.
The trees of the Great Basin speak to us, Juniper, Pinyon, Bristlecone, and Limber Pines. These trees hold within their forms a long history of fortitude in the face of change. How to celebrate their venerable forms? Scientists pay their own kinds of attention. I respond by reading their gestures, drawing many portraits, trying to catch their surprising expressions. One must spend a long time with these trees to hear what they have to say. We listen, as well as we can.
Read MoreBy Stephanie Gibson
One of my earliest memories of artmaking was during a Grade 8 class assignment. The teacher placed a wooden rung chair on a table in the center of the room and instructed us *not* to draw it. Instead, he implored the class to draw “everything around it.”
Read MoreFruit-heavy with pomegranate
hanging from a slender branch,
bending to the fig. A leaf-shadowed
mauve wall separates their oleander
and plum-lined yard from yours with
a string of party lights. When you squint,
they sparkle like a portal in a dune.
By Sarah Calvo
Over the course of 10 years, my husband and I moved seven times around the country. In that time away, the sights were what we missed the most about Las Vegas. This is a city of spectacle and surprise wrapped in sparkling sequins. It has a reputation in every corner of the earth.
Read MoreBy Jane E. Olive
There is a softness in the twilight.|
Not the rude brilliance of sunlight
So piercing you cannot
Face it as you drive.
There is an easing off the day’s effort,
A knowing that plans left undone
Wait for another day.
By Bonnie Kelso
On August 12, 2023, the Walter E. Convention Center in downtown Washington, D.C. hosted the National Book Festival! Before the doors officially opened, I found people lined up as neat as a library stack all the way around the corner, tote bags slung over their shoulders ready to be filled with exquisite treats, like bookish children on a Halloween night.
Read MoreBy Joanne Mallari
This poem appears in the 2023 issue of The Meadow.
and someone has hurt your heart.
I’ll tell you what a therapist
told me, which is that ruminating
on the past breeds depression.
The light will not be more lovely
than it is now, on a winter morning,
when all the intensity of a summer
sunset fits into a few minutes
before 9am. Winter welcomes
a twin energy, like last night
when I drew Inanna’s card
from a deck of divine women.
By Isabelle Bellinghausen
Founded in 2016 to support the mission of the first Clark County Poet Laureate, Poetry Promise, Inc. is perhaps the first and largest community-based program for poets in Clark County, Nevada. We remain committed to uplifting and amplifying the voices of emerging writers from underserved communities and working poets as they hone their craft. We provide financial support, education, and stability as writers develop their voice.
Read MoreBy Sidne Teske
Tuscarora, the town I call home, is plonked into the middle of Bureau of Land Management open range. Local ranchers have allotments where their cattle graze, and our town is located inside an allotment. At different times of year cattle wander through town at will: we people are the interlopers. This is their domain.
Read MoreBy Staff of Nevada Humanities
Want to learn about Nevada history and culture? Click on the ONE! The Online Nevada Encyclopedia (ONE) is a free and easy to use online resource about Nevada history and contemporary culture. This multimedia educational resource explores the history, politics, heritage, and culture of the Silver State. If you have access to the internet, you can dig deeper into all things Nevada at onlinenevada.org.
Read MoreBy Justin Evans
This poem was originally published in the journal, Petroglyph.
Driving south in the pre-dawn Nevada desert
on a two-lane road, I measure the distance between
my car and oncoming headlights in heartbeats.
Close to the road two mares stand
casting dark shadows, sleeping with one leg
raised, ready for the run.
By Staff of Nevada Humanities
We asked staff, members of the Nevada Humanities Board of Trustees, and even our consultants to share some of their summer favorites—reads, podcasts, flix, and more—with our Double Down readers. Here’s a list of summer recommendations!
Read MoreBy Staff of Nevada Humanities
Two books that celebrate and educate about underwater creatures have been selected by Nevada Humanities, home of the Nevada Center for the Book, to represent the state at the annual Library of Congress National Book Festival, which will be held on Saturday, August 12, 2023, at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. This year’s book selections from Nevada celebrate the smallest creatures of the sea to the largest fish of our lakes and rivers: Nudi Gill: Poison Powerhouse of the Sea by author and illustrator Bonnie Kelso, and Chasing Giants: In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish by Zeb Hogan and Stefan Lovgren.
Read MoreBy GennaRose Nethercott
“If you come thiiiiiis way, we’ve got two thousand clowns.” Reeva’s eyes light up, a grin highlighting the gap left behind from a tooth she’s just recently lost. She’s six and isn’t afraid of anything—even the piles and piles of clowns lining every surface of her family’s novelty motel. Ragdoll clowns and porcelain figurines. Pennywises and hobo clowns. Jack-in-the-boxes and red-nosed puppets. This: her legacy.
Read MoreBy Paul Michelsen
I shuffled the deck
Not playing cards or Tarot
but 59 cards, each representing
one of the Buddhist lojong slogans.
I picked number 59
which could be the first or last line
of an American-style haiku
with its five syllables.
By Emily Hoover
Originally published in Waxing and Waning. The poem was selected as runner-up in the Tennessee Tempest Edition contest in 2021.
In springtime, rust-colored spiderwebs
are woven across the Mojave like fishnet
stockings draped on an open dresser.
This desert dodder engulfs creosote bushes
& sagebrush scrubs, an outstretched
hand in the dark after a nightmare.
By Harry Fagel and Rodney J. Lee
We asked Harry Fagel and Rodney J. Lee, poets and guest curators of the current Nevada Humanities Exhibition Series Affinity for Masculinity: An Exhibition of Poetry to answer three questions about their inspiration in creating this exhibition and about their 30-year friendship.
Read More
