A Toast to the Venues
By George Tsz-Kwan Lam
Artwork by Chris Lanier.
The excitement is building around the 2024 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl. The Crawl is northern Nevada’s largest literary festival. I am grateful to have the opportunity to work together with our team at Nevada Humanities to bring this event to life. We are now putting together the final touches to a rich program of sessions, readings, and interactive activities for Saturday, October 12 in downtown Reno.
This year’s Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl will feature more than 70 authors, performers, and artists who work in fiction, nonfiction, history, poetry, and more. We will welcome more than 50 local authors, artists, community members, and collaborators to this year’s event, in addition to authors and performers from Las Vegas and beyond Nevada.
In addition to the featured panelists and performers, I would also like to acknowledge the other major contributors to this year’s Crawl: the buildings across downtown Reno and the California Avenue corridor that will host our sessions and events. Our venues include: 24 California Avenue (which houses RareTea, The Wheyfarer, and Elixir Superfood & Juice), the Nevada Museum of Art, The Loving Cup, Arts for All Nevada, the Great Basin Community Food Co-op, Royce Burger Bar, 1864 Tavern, and the Downtown Reno Library. I would like to tell you more about three of these buildings.
Photo by George Tsz-Kwan Lam.
Downtown Reno Library
Whenever I enter the Downtown Reno Library with its soaring skylights and lush greenery, I reflect on Hewitt C. Wells’ striking concept for a library-in-a-garden, where patrons gather in pods and conversation clusters as they wind their way through and between the stacks. To me, the design echoes Frank Lloyd Wright’s open offices for the Johnson Wax Building, and I am grateful that the city preserved such an open and contemplative community space as part of Reno’s changing urban landscape.
Lake Mansion
The Lake Mansion is home to Arts for All Nevada and serves as our main information hub for this year’s Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl. When I took a tour of the house with Arts for All Nevada’s executive director Jackie Clay, Clay showed me photos from the Lake Mansion’s most famous Reno story: the building was moved—twice—in a there-and-back journey that captured Reno’s imagination. Picture an entire mansion moving slowly down Virginia Street amidst the dense collection of stores and motels in 1971!
Photo by George Tsz-Kwan Lam.
Photo by George Tsz-Kwan Lam.
Nevada Museum of Art
The Nevada Museum of Art begins its story with co-founder James Church, a climate scientist credited with his pioneering research on snow deposits in the early 20th century. It’s fitting that the museum’s modern structure—with sloping, horizontal contours inspired by the Black Rock Desert—is itself a conversation between nature and human creativity. While I have yet to experience Burning Man, every time I walk by architect Will Bruder’s monolithic expression of the Black Rock Desert situated in busy downtown Reno next to an office tower, I remind myself of the vast, foreign vistas that await me just outside Reno. In a similar way, our team at Nevada Humanities continues this important conversation between nature and our shared humanity with programs such as Sagebrush to Sandstone.
Join us on Saturday, October 12, 2024, in downtown Reno as we celebrate the written word in unique Reno buildings!
George Tsz-Kwan Lam is the assistant director of Nevada Humanities. In addition to his role with the organization, George is also a composer who has recently worked with the Atlanta Opera and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute on new projects. George has served on the music faculty at the City University of New York and Hong Kong Baptist University.
Photo by Noah Amir Arjomand.