Featuring Nevada authors Michael P. Branch and Robin McLean; ISMAY, a folk/Americana music project from Petaluma, California, driven by singer-songwriter Avery Hellman and joined by Andrew Allen-Fahlander on guitar and mandolin; and The Wind, a podcast project produced by Fil Corbitt, this cross-genre event will include readings, live radio performance, music, and storytelling from a collection of Western writers and thinkers. Each of these artists has a long track record of writing about and performing in the West. This night will be a showcase of their findings and ideas as well as a celebration of this beautiful, nuanced place we call home.
Registration is required. Doors open at 6 pm. Seating is general admission. Merchandise sales and book signings to follow.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
Michael P. Branch: An award-winning humorist and high desert writer, Michael P. Branch is Foundation Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Mike is the author of more than 300 essays and reviews, which have appeared in venues including CNN, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Outside, Pacific Standard, Huffington Post, Bustle, Utne Reader, Orion, Ecotone, National Parks, The Scientist, High Country News, Terrain.org, and Places Journal. Mike has published 10 books, including Raising Wild, Rants from the Hill, and How to Cuss in Western. His creative nonfiction includes pieces recognized as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays, The Best Creative Nonfiction, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Non-required Reading. Mike’s 2022 book, On the Trail of the Jackalope, has been called “an entertaining and enlightening road trip to the heart of an American legend.” To learn more please visit michaelbranchwriter.com
ISMAY is a folk/Americana music project from Petaluma, California, driven by singer-songwriter Avery Hellman and joined by Andrew Allen-Fahlander on guitar and mandolin. Their debut album Songs Of Sonoma Mountain was released in 2020 and named one of the 10 best albums in the Bay Area, garnering features in American Songwriter, No Depression, Sonoma Magazine, and more. Growing up backstage at their grandfather’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, ISMAY was inspired early on by artists such as Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Hazel Dickens. Since then, they have appeared throughout the West Coast at music festivals such as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Strawberry Music Festival, The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, The Lantern Tour, and at renowned venues such as the Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, the Golden State Theater, and the Mystic Theater. In addition, ISMAY has opened for acclaimed artists including Steve Earle, Watchhouse, Justin Townes Earle, Robert Earl Keen, John Doe, and Chuck Prophet. In March of 2023, ISMAY was featured as one of a select group of artists from around the world participating in the Apple TV+ Show My Kind of Country, produced by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon. Gearing up for the release of their sophomore album Desert Pavement, ISMAY will reveal 2023 tour dates in addition to confirmed performances at the SF Jazz Americana Week and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering as well as other exciting announcements. To learn more please visit ISMAYmusic.com.
Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her first story collection Reptile House won the 2013 BOA Editions Fiction Prize and was twice a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Story Prize. Her debut novel Pity the Beast, published in November 2021 by And Other Stories, was noted as a best book of fiction of the year in such outlets as The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, White Review, and long-listed for the Reading the West Prize. It was a recommended paperback in the New York Times in November 2022. Her second story collection, Get'em Young, Treat'em Tough, Tell'em Nothing, published by And Other Stories in October 2022, was an Editors' Choice in the New York Times and was long-listed for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize. Learn more at robinmclean.net
Fil Corbitt is a radio journalist and audio artist who makes a podcast called The Wind at a handmade desk in the Sierra Nevada. Previously, they worked on USA Today's The City and their radio work has appeared on NPR, CBC, 99% Invisible, Snap Judgement, Treefort Music Fest, and The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, among many others. The Wind was also a participant of the Google Podcasts Creator Program through PRX in 2022. You can only hear the wind in relation to what it’s scraping up against. Fil's podcast The Wind works that way too: though it’s made from a quiet desk in the woods in a mountain wilderness, the show often touches on topics more loud and confronting. From the politics of sound (Whip Law: an exploration of Reno’s houseless whip culture, aired nationally), to queer spaces (They/Them), radical Brazilian punk, train yards, and rodeo chutes, Fil’s work aims to observe and meditate on the way sound shapes our lives both overtly and ethereally. Listen and find more at TheWind.org.