As we march toward another new year, we put more distance between ourselves and the origins of the traditions many of us hold dear. Fruitcake, gift giving, and hanging ornaments – they’re all a blend of cultural ideas crackling aside the hearty yule log on a holiday hearth.

Writer Roberto Lovato joins Francesca to talk about the need to use the R word: revolutionary!

Las Vegas is many cities to many people, and that’s part of what makes it such a challenge to capture in a book. For many, it exists as much in the past as present. For some, it’s an irresistible canvas on which to paint a dystopian future. Fortunately for us, some very good writers continue to tell the Las Vegas story as they perceive it.

It’s getting cold in Las Vegas, which is nice after that brutal summer. And for many people, reading a good book is the perfect thing to do when it’s this cold out. So today, four local authors and editors are with us to talk about their books, ones we think you really might be interested in.

Growing up in California, the historically most important destination for migrants in the Americas, the Spanish word exodo had a familiar ring. My Salvadoran parents used it to describe their journey along the Pan-American Highway as they left El Salvador for San Francisco in the 1950s. The exodo also included the stories of family members like my cousin Ana, who crossed the border illegally after surviving the perilous train ride from war-torn El Salvador in the 1980s.

Summer is for book lovers. And this has been a momentous summer for readers in Las Vegas. Besides all the summer programs happening at the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and the numerous book clubs happening across the valley, two notable local authors released books: author and UNLV professor Wendy Chen's Their Divine Fires and poet and UNLV emeritus professor Donald Revell's Canandaigua.

“Community.” “Curious.” “Expectant.” “Unified.” In one word, each person explains his or her feelings at this particular moment. Seated in a circle of red plastic chairs, an array of community spiritual leaders and UNLV students and faculty pass a microphone to introduce themselves at the “How to Be a Peacemaker” discussion group, part of the university’s ongoing Diversity Dialogues series.

His blistering dystopian adventure novel Hammer of the Dogs was published by the University of Nevada Press in September.

Majoring in English as undergrads in the early 1990s, Gen Xers like me hid our passions from the professors.

Jarret Keene, an assistant professor of English at UNLV, recently published a novel called Hammer of the Dogs, set in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. It tells the story of Lash, a 21-year-old woman who is trying to save her peers and Las Vegas from forces that use technology in nefarious ways.

Explore the origins behind witch costume features—the hat, the black dress, prominent nose and green skin.

Food writer Kim Foster explores these associations and more, as part of UNLV’s University Forum Lecture series in collaboration with the Black Mountain Institute