From a Crawl to a Walk
By Mark Maynard
I’ve been fortunate to be a part of the Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl since its inception, and I’m thrilled it’s returning after a COVID-induced hiatus. Attendance grows every year, packing venues on California Avenue and the downtown corridor. As the event approaches, I’ve been thinking about how the energy and love of literature celebrated once a year could become an everyday fixture for Reno and Sparks.
On a recent trip to Ireland, I was struck at how a country long known for its disproportionate number of literary artists celebrates its writers, and their work, through permanent public art. The smaller towns honor local writers in public spaces: Dingle’s “writer’s wall” embeds the names and works of local authors in the Irish (Gaelic) language–a reminder of the significance of words themselves–and Sligo’s buildings feature portraits and poems of hometown poet W.B. Yeats. The larger cities invite locals and visitors alike to share in their deep literary culture: Dublin has brass plaques embedded in sidewalks and streets to mark Leopold Bloom’s wanderings in Ulysses, and the courtyard of a pub in Belfast has a pin oak around which the words of poet Seamus Heaney’s The Wishing Tree curl in a circle of metal.
A section of the Writer's Wall in Dingle, Munster Province, Ireland.
A mural portrait of W.B. Yeats, accompanied by his poetry, in Sligo, Connacht Province, Ireland.
A brass plaque commemorating Leopold Bloom's fictitious June 16, 1904 journey around Dublin at the base of the statue of Thomas Moore in Dublin, Ireland.
Seamus Heaney's "The Wishing Tree" surrounds a pin oak tree in the courtyard of The Dark Horse Pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Photos by Mark Maynard.
This tangible, permanent celebration of regionally connected writers got me thinking that the flourishing literary community of northern Nevada would be well-served by a public art program focused on literature and writers. Imagine a selection from Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s City of Trembling Leaves on metal plates under the branches of the trees in the Sundance Bookstore courtyard, or a passage from Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land writ large on the side of Louis’ Basque Corner. Writers from Nevada’s past could cohabitate with contemporary poets and prose writers, their words prominent in stone, steel, and wood on sidewalks, walls, benches, and buildings, inviting curious passerby to seek out further work of those authors for their own bookshelves.
Attending literary events is an important social engagement in a community that appreciates and supports art. However, the act of reading engenders empathy, stokes creativity, and provides inspiration. By putting poems, essays, and stories into public spaces, we would broaden access to Nevada’s literature, inviting people into a world of words. Locals could amble along a writers’ walk alone or with friends, and tourists would have a chance to engage with the local literature no matter what time of year they were visiting.
Reno has an impressive public art scene; there are guided tours of the murals that bring vibrancy and creativity to spaces around town, and the Burning Man culture has graced the city with stunning large-scale sculptures and installations. Literature and visual arts have always been an integral part of the reading experience, from illuminated manuscripts to illustrated children’s books. Adding a more prominent literary dimension to the public art already on offer would further promote our public spaces as places to contemplate words, discuss ideas, and find inspiration in literature every day of the year.
Mark Maynard is a Reno author and a professor of English at Truckee Meadows Community College. He is the chair of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Selection Committee, and sits on the editorial advisory board of the University of Nevada Press. Mark is participating in the 2022 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl in Reno on September 10, 2022.