Nevada Humanities, Baobab Press, the publishing arm of Reno’s Sundance Books and Music, and the Nevada Museum of Art are collaborating in a community event for This Side of the Divide: A Reading and Conversation. This event will be held at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno on Saturday, June 1, 2019 from 3 – 5 p.m. Tickets are required, $12 general admission / $8 Museum members / $5 students, and tickets can be purchased at www.nevadaart.org.
Published in 2019, This Side of the Divide: Stories of the American West is an anthology, complete with an introduction by Nevada’s own Claire Vaye Watkins, that reflects the diversity and complexity of the American West’s landscapes, people, issues, challenges, and successes.
“This Side of the Divide tells stories about the West that have until now not been fully told, offering an illuminating glimpse at some of the lives lived in this diverse and complex region,” says Christina Barr, Executive Director of Nevada Humanities. “That the book inspiring this program was created in collaboration between graduate students in the creative writing program at the University of Nevada, Reno and our local independent press, Baobab Press, is icing on the cake.”
This Side of the Divide: Stories of the American West is avolume of 25 stories, curated in part by students at the University of Nevada, Reno, Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, that engages with locales west of the Continental Divide. Written with keen perception about the lives, work, aspirations, fears, and ethnic roots of a diverse population, these stories attempt to shed light on a subject, place, and people that is too often portrayed through stereotypes.
About the Participating Authors:
Chanelle Benz has published short stories in Guernica, Granta.com, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Fence, and she is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize. Her story collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead was published in 2017 by Ecco Press. It was named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle and one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017. It was also longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Story Prize. It won the 2018 Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Fiction and the Philosophical Society of Texas 2018 Book Award for fiction. Her novel The Gone Dead is forthcoming from Ecco Press in June 2019. She currently lives in Memphis where she teaches at Rhodes College.
Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection A Collapse of Horses (Coffee House Press 2016) and the novella The Warren (Tor.com 2016). A new story collection, Song for the Unraveling of the World, will be published in 2019. He has also recently published Windeye (Coffee House Press 2012) and Immobility (Tor 2012), both of which were finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, Manuela Draeger, and David B. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, as well as an NEA fellowship. His work has been translated into Czech, French, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Persian, Russia, Spanish, Slovenian, and Turkish. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Critical Studies Program at CalArts.
Vanessa Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of A River of Stars (Ballantine 2018)and Deceit and Other Possibilities (Willow Books 2016). She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. She has written for the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other publications. A Bay Area native, she works and teaches at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.
Tickets for this event can be purchased at www.nevadaart.org. $12 general / $8 Museum members / $5 students
About Nevada Humanities: Nevada Humanities is one of 56 independent, nonprofit state and territorial humanities councils affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities. With offices in Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada Humanities creates public programs and supports public projects statewide that define the Nevada experience and facilitate the exploration of issues that matter to the people of Nevada and their communities. For more information about Nevada Humanities visit nevadahumanities.org.
Leave a Reply