A Look Back at Highlights from 2024
As we conclude 2024, Nevada Humanities staff members take a look back at their favorite moments from this year.
From Kathleen Kuo:
Promotional image for Humanities at Play with Christina Le
In 2024, my favorite program highlights included Humanities at Play streams with guests Molly Appel and Christina Le. I enjoyed showcasing the games created by Appel’s students on stream and reacting to them with the audience members in attendance. Cooking potstickers with Christina and sharing stories about family, heritage, and identity also especially resonated with me.
I have loved working with local writer and narrative designer Ashley Warren on Loreloop: The World We Live In, The World We Create, an original collection of interative stories and tabletop role-playing game that is set in Nevada. This storytelling format holds so much potential to connect people around a table and across communities. I look forward to the development of this project and sharing the full contents with the public once ready.
The Nevada Booth at the Library of Congress National Book Festival. Photo by George Tsz-Kwan Lam
This year, our Nevada Center for the Book featured books by authors Sophie Sheppard and Kim Foster, as they represented our state at the Library of Congress National Book Festival. Getting to meet and work with these women who care so deeply about nourishing and sustaining their communities was truly inspiring.
Finally, I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to work with the Neon Pacific Initiative (NPI), a new Mellon Foundation-funded initiative at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to highlight and elevate AANHPI voices and culture in southern Nevada. Throughout the fall semester, I worked with our first-ever NPI intern Gina Ragudos on programs that highlight judokas and lei-makers in Las Vegas, and I cannot wait for the future public humanities programs that will emerge out of this initiative.
From George Tsz-Kwan Lam:
My favorite program highlights this year include the annual Robert Laxalt Distinguished Writer Program events in October, a collaboration between Nevada Humanities and the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. This year’s awardee is Linda Villarosa, and Nevada Humanities hosted an insightful and timely conversation with Linda Villarosa and Melanie Duckworth at The Holland Project.
As for our annual Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl, my favorite highlight was the session with Stacey Burns and Esha Hoferer on their efforts to revitalize the Paiute language in northern Nevada. I would like to extend a special thank-you to community curators Ignacio Montoya and Debra Harry for connecting me with Hoferer and Burns as well as our entire team of community curators who brought their unique vision and perspective to our Crawl — a veritable festival of ideas and a joyous celebration of literature in all of its forms.
From Christina Barr:
Scott Hinton, Black Rock Desert, Nevada, digital photography, 36” x 24”, 2019. From the exhibition Between Earth & Sky: Exploring the Great Basin through the Eyes of Northern Nevada Artists.
As 2024 winds down, I’ve been thinking about all of our accomplishments this year. We kicked off the year with the Nevada Humanities Exhibition Series exhibition Between Earth & Sky: Exploring the Great Basin through the Eyes of Northern Nevada Artists, which brought together a diverse group of artists who share a love for our beautiful Nevada landscapes. We revitalized the popular Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl to great acclaim, piloted our new TRPG Loreloop: The World We Live In, The World We Create, and ended the year with one of the most meaningful programs of 2024 — The Gift of Aloha: Lei Making in Southern Nevada, developed through a partnership with the Neon Pacific Initiative at UNLV. One of the great pleasures of our work is mentoring young people who seek support for crafting fulfilling careers in journalism, communications, the arts, arts administration, and as culture workers. We love cultivating the next wave public humanities practitioners. In 2025, we look forward to pushing the humanities envelope even further into the core of Nevada communities with exciting collaborations that feature diverse Nevada voices from every corner of the state.