THE AUTHOR OF THE YELLOW HOUSE IN CONVERSATION WITH CLAYTEE WHITE

In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. The Yellow House tells the story of Broom’s family and their relationship to home in one of America’s most mythologized cities. The Yellow House is a memoir of place, class, race, inequality, and internalized shame. Join Black Mountain Institute and The Writer's Block as Broom discusses her debut work with distinguished oral historian Claytee White.

Sarah M. Broom’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Oxford American and O The Oprah Magazine, among others. A native New Orleanian, she received her Masters in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004, and was lead writer for Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans. She has been awarded fellowships at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and The MacDowell Colony. She now lives in Woodstock, New York.

This event is free and open to the public.

THE AUTHOR OF MACHINE IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVE WOODWARD

Black Mountain Institute and The Writer’s Block are proud to present fiction writer Susan Steinberg. Machine, Steinberg’s first novel, surveys guilt and blame in the wake of tragedy. In lean, acrobatic prose, Steinberg subverts assumptions about narrative and challenges conventional gender roles. Join us as she discusses her work with Graywolf Press editor Steve Woodward.
 

Susan Steinberg is the author of Machine, Spectacle, Hydroplane, and The End of Free Love. She is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches at the University of San Francisco.

This event is free and open to the public.

ALUMNI READING SERIES: MEGAN MERCHANT

Hosted by Black Mountain Institute at RLL 101 on the main campus of UNLV

Megan Merchant holds an MFA from UNLV and was the winner of the 2017 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the 2016-2017 Cog Literary Award, and the Las Vegas Poets Prize. Join us for Merchant’s return to Las Vegas in anticipation of her latest book, Bleuet/Bluetiful/Blue, available March 2020.

Megan Merchant is the editor of Pirene's Fountain, an editor at The Comstock Review, and the author of four chapbooks: Translucent, sealed; Unspeakable Light; In the Rooms of a Tiny House; and A Thousand Paper Cranes. Her first children’s book, These Words I Shaped For You, is now available with Penguin Random House.

DAYS OF AWE: AN AFTERNOON WITH A.M. HOMES AT THE LAS VEGAS BOOK FESTIVAL

Hosted by the Las Vegas Book Festival at the Historic Fifth Street School
 

“What I'm doing,” A.M. Homes said in a 2013 interview for The Guardian, “which sometimes makes people uncomfortable, is saying the things we don't want to say out loud.” The author of 13 books, including novels, story collections, and the best-selling memoir The Mistress’s Daughter, Homes finds paths out of ordinary life straight into the deepest woods of secrets, fantasies, and yearnings. Her latest collection, Days of Awe, alludes in its title to the holiest period of the Jewish year but also anchors itself in the ongoing, everyday states of awe that Homes wants to evoke and pay respect to. Join us for a reading and conversation with Homes at the Las Vegas Book Festival, introduced by several short readings by Las Vegas writers who will offer their most indelible encounters with “awe.”

A. M. Homes is the author of the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter and the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the story collections The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know.

AN INTERACTIVE COMIC WITH MATT HUYNH

Hosted by The Believer at Art Square Theater 

In this special evening, artist Matt Huynh will debut a cinematic, interactive comic about growing up in a community of Vietnam War refugees resettled in Victoria, Australia. Kristen Radtke, The Believer’s art director, will interview Huynh after his presentation.

Matt Huynh is a Sydney-born, New York-based visual artist and storyteller. His bold brush and ink paintings are informed by calligraphic Eastern sumi-e ink traditions, as well as the mechanical reproduction of popular Western comic books and their limitations. Huynh’s work has been exhibited by the MoMA, The Smithsonian, The Sydney Opera House, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and the New York Historical Society.

Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic nonfiction book Imagine Wanting Only This. She is the art director and deputy publisher of The Believer magazine. She is at work on a graphic essay collection, Seek You: Essays on American Loneliness, and Terrible Men, a graphic novel, both forthcoming from Pantheon.

The Writer’s Block will be selling books at the door.