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.

MORE REAL THAN REAL: HISTORIC AND SPECULATIVE FICTION 400 YEARS INTO THE DIASPORA

A conversation with novelists Marlon James & David Bradley

Four centuries after the first Africans were brought to the shores of North America as captives, Pen/Faulkner Award-winning novelist of The Chaneysville Incident, David Bradley and novelist Marlon James, 2015 Man Booker Prize winner for A Brief History of Seven Killings, meet in conversation to discuss their work and the role of historical and speculative fiction as possible correction, reflection, and refraction of the Black experience. 
 

David Bradley is the author of the urban-blues novel South Street (1975) and the Chaneysville Incident (1981). Long-appointed by critics as the successor to Ellison’s The Invisible Man, The Chaneysville Incident is described as “unsparing in its portrayal of racial violence,” and features John Washington, a history professor whose return home becomes symbolic of a Black America charged with the task of recovering legacy and truth through a diligent and painful hunt, and through listening to the winds of a historical past that has not quite left us. Born and raised in a small town outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bradley now lives in Southern California. His short story "You Remember the Pinmill,"was awarded a 2014 O. Henry Prize. His most recent work in nonfiction has appeared in the journals Narrative, Brevity and TriQuarterly. He is currently at work on a collection of essays, The Bondage Hypothesis: Meditations on Race, History and America.

Born in Jamaica and describing himself as a “post-post-colonial writer,” Marlon James published his first novel in 2005. John Crow’s Devil, a heady amalgam of Caribbean lore, patois and the age-old battle between good and evil, went on to become a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction. His second novel, The Book of Night Women, is told through the eyes of a female protagonist born amidst the cruelty and terror of a Jamaican sugar plantation at the turn of the 19th century. The work was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and earned an NAACP Image Award. His third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is a re-imagined and re-energized account of the 1976 assassination attempt on the life of Bob Marley told in multi-voice. The novel is the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize and was named a New York Times’ Notable Book. James’ latest novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the first installment of his Dark Star trilogy.

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.
 

CELEBRATING A CENTURY OF YALE YOUNGER POETS

Recently named 'The Best Emerging Voice of 2018' by the Las Vegas Weekly, Las Vegas musician Sonia Barcelona is making waves. Disenfranchised with years of studying accounting, the up-and-coming musician ditched the debits and credits at 19 and picked up her ukulele because she knew making music was her calling. She describes herself at that time as being "shy and quiet."