How do you imagine the modern woman? Does she stuff her bra with tennis balls? Does she drink too much at class reunions, or steal animals from the zoo? According to Alissa Nutting, she definitely does. The BMI writer talks about her fresh...
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T. C. Boyle is the author of twenty books, including World's End (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award), The Road to Wellville (adapted into a major motion picture), Drop City (a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book...
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Peter Hessler was the The New Yorker's correspondent in the People’s Republic of China, from 1996 to 2008. His first book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which recounts his experiences during two years in the Peace Corps, won the...
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Peter Hessler was the The New Yorker's correspondent in the People’s Republic of China, from 1996 to 2008. His first book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which recounts his experiences during two years in the Peace Corps, won the...
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Jim Lehrer is the author of two memoirs, three plays, and 20 novels, including Super, Flying Crows, and The Phony Marine, as well as a series featuring a fictional lieutenant governor of Oklahoma. He has been honored with numerous awards...
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Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants, and Cuban-American poet, novelist, and...
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Richard Brookhiser, senior editor at National Review, Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of The Death of Conservatism, and David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and founder of...
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Richard Brookhiser, senior editor at National Review, Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of The Death of Conservatism, and David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and founder of...
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On November 10, E.L. Doctorow —the renowned author of Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, and The March — read from his newest novel, Homer & Langley. Doctorow served as UNLV's 2009 Elias Ghanem Chair in Creative Writing.
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Alice Waters, the celebrated chef and author, is joined in conversation by Raj Patel, a noted food scholar, and David "Mas" Masumoto, a writer and organic farmer, to discuss the slow food movement, sustainable agriculture, fighting hunger...
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Novelist Cristina Garcia will be reading from her latest novel, A Handbook to Luck. Part of the novel is set in Las Vegas when a magician in exile from Cuba takes his act and his son to the Strip. Time and circumstance bring together three...
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In an event co-sponsored by CineVegas, novelist Russell Banks and writer/producer/actress Guinevere Turner discuss the mechanisms that turn novels into movies. Banks' novels include The Reserve, Cloudsplitter, The Darling, The Relation of...
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Reading and conversation with author of "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay," "Wonder Boys," co-sponsored by Nevada Humanities, the City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs, the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and the...
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Poet Charles Simic engages students and faculty in conversation. A casual affair, this event took place in the afternoon of October 21, 2008, in advance of Simic's formal reading which took place later that night. Questions touch on the...
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Author of "A Thousand Acres," "Horse Heaven," and "Ten Days in the Hills"
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On the eve of the 2007 CNN Democratic presidential debate held in Las Vegas, U.S. Congresswoman Dina Titus leads former CNN news anchor Aaron Brown, New Yorker Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza, and New Yorker staff writer and Iraq...
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Preeminent Nigerian novelists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chris Abani, exiled writer Chenjerai Hove of Zimbabwe, and Zambian memoirist Alexandra Fuller join Nobel Laureate and BMI Senior Fellow Wole Soyinka and explore the myriad...
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Preeminent Nigerian novelists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chris Abani, exiled writer Chenjerai Hove of Zimbabwe, and Zambian memoirist Alexandra Fuller join Nobel Laureate and BMI Senior Fellow Wole Soyinka and explore the myriad...
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Distinguished poet, playwright, Nobel Laureate, and visual artist Derek Walcott reads and discusses selections of his work. Walcott spent the month of April 2007 at UNLV as the Elias Ghanem Chair in creative writing and taught a graduate...
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Named one of Time Magazine‘s "25 Most Influential Americans," Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is among the most prominent scholars on African American culture, history and literature of our time. Gates rose from a working class West Virginia family...
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Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate and Member of the BMI Board of Advisors, on art, politics, and democracy.
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The Black Mountain Institute is an international literary center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We bring writers—and the literary imagination—into the heart of public life through live experiences, fellowships, innovative media, and literary activism. The Institute champions writers and storytellers through programs, fellowships and community engagement. We make space for meaningful collaborations and conversations; we understand service as vital. We ask questions about access, the environment, and labor. We find our home in Las Vegas–a place of hospitality in the middle of a desert. Between the manufactured and natural, urban and wide expanse, built and rebuilt, bounty and scarcity, we live within narratives of destruction and preservation. From the brightest spot on the planet, Black Mountain Institute amplifies writing and artistic expression to connect us to each other in the Las Vegas Valley, the Southwest, and beyond.