On a recent very warm Saturday afternoon, just a few blocks northeast of a string of ramshackle chapels offering Elvis-themed weddings on Las Vegas Boulevard, novelist Tommy Orange was discussing the critical reception given to “There There,” his polyphonic novel about contemporary Native Americans.

On a recent very warm Saturday afternoon, just a few blocks northeast of a string of ramshackle chapels offering Elvis-themed weddings on Las Vegas Boulevard, the novelist Tommy Orange was discussing the critical reception given to “There There,” his polyphonic novel about contemporary Native Americans.

As one of the city’s cultural ambassadors, Joshua Wolf Shenk knows exactly what he’s up against when trying to shape the public perception of Las Vegas into that of a bustling arts hub.

Five local creatives — filmmaker, musician, performer, literary dynamo, illustrator — who are having a moment

Calling all female military veterans, active-duty service members, National Guard and reservists: A new Women Veterans’ Writing Group is now in session.

The second annual Believer Festival—organized by the bimonthly arts magazine of the same name—kicked off on Friday, April 13, at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, with readings from poets Jericho Brown and Javon Johnson; prose writers Nick Hornby, Leslie Jamison, and Rachel Kushner; and others. On Saturday, in downtown Las Vegas, graphic novelist Thi Bui and novelist Zinzi Clemmons discussed their new works with Dave Eggers at a restaurant next door to the local bookstore, the Writer’s Block. (The crowd had outgrown the space.) Later that day, Mohsin Hamid and Tayari Jones read from their latest novels, and author Morgan Jerkins interviewed filmmaker Barry Jenkins before an enthusiastic crowd. That evening, a sold-out benefit event saw multitalented actor-comedians John Hodgman and Jean Grae cohost a storytelling variety show of sorts that put such writers as Ayelet Waldman and Meg Wolitzer on the same stage as comedian Aparna Nancherla and musician Aimee Mann.

What do you say when Oprah Winfrey tells you that your latest novel is going to be her next book club selection?

This August, Atlanta-born, Brooklyn-based author Tayari Jones arrived in Las Vegas. She’s here as a Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow, which means she’s spending the academic year working on her next book. Right now, Jones is on a six-week, 35-event book tour. She spoke with Las Vegas Weekly from her stop in Boston. She returns to UNLV in March.

*Life is about to change for author Tayari Jones.

A novel written in the English language with a name like An American Marriage conjures up a specific set of broad outlines: post-war optimism, masturbation in the suburbs, the disappointment of life, familial breakdown, that sort of thing. “White people in Connecticut getting a divorce,” author Tayari Jones supplies dryly, from the fringe of a migraine, when I begin to ask her about the title of her newest novel. It was a yoke she was keen to sidestep, even though she was the one who suggested it in the first place.

Feel Free, by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press, Feb. 6)
Smith is as famous for what she thinks as what she makes up. In this new collection of essays her subjects range from highbrow to low- (Knausgaard to Bieber), from politics (Brexit) to tech (Facebook), and from the arcane (Schopenhauer) to the personal (her father). Feel Free is a shepherd’s pie of nonfiction whose only through line is a writer unafraid of getting lost, because she always knows the way home. Smith has mixed it up with critics since she herself was a wunderkind with a giant advance, but age hasn’t hardened her against the world, only made her more porous.

Most stories are, in one way or another, about love. With Valentine’s Day approaching, I sifted through my pile of new releases to find some especially appropriate reads for this most romantic of holidays: a poignant novel about marriage, an essay collection about relationships, a thriller of love-gone-wrong, and a charmingly high-tech rom-com. All are worth a read, with open hearts.