Why Las Vegas? Las Vegas is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is home to the newly created Institute of Modern Letters, whose board members include Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie and Russell Banks. Las Vegas is also the first U.S. city to be designated by the International Parliament of Writers as a City of Asylum for persecuted writers in exile. As the first major public event to celebrate and promote literature in southern Nevada, the Vegas Valley Book Festival will help raise the profile of local literary organizations and expand the audience for humanities programming of all kinds.Very cool indeed. I shall see if I can get to that one. Scott McCloud (of Understanding Comics fame) shall be there as well. Also not to be missed (if I do happen to go) are Steve Gerber (creator of Howard the Duck) and Jill Thompson (who worked a bit on The Sandman). Hopefully it'll be a huge success, drawing in large crowds of people appreciating all genres and media of literature.
And who knows, this event might be the spark needed to start a Literature major at LVA... but it's far too early to tell. The City of Asylum title may (or may not) herald in an interesting array of authors.
Hmph. "Just a casino town" indeed...
Yes, I know I'm being bad. Taking another break from homework to go online and peruse. It's better than doing this "patriotic" children's book for American Lit. My group members are all fellow cynics, and finding a "patriotic" subject was a challenge for all of us. Originally we were thinking "FireArms of the US," then "Wartime Mistakes of the Government," and then "(In)Famous Killers from America." "The Wild West" would have worked if only we down-played the Donner-party cannibalism and bloody gun fights.
So we settled for "Corporate America: The Backbone of Our Society." This book will definitely be a nice, backhanded compliment to our economy.
Other homework includes: quotes and notes for Am. Lit. as well as vocabulary cards, flashcards for Japanese (60+ vocab words for the first chapter alone), an entire slew of miscellany for Physics, vocabulary for Trig., and a sketchbook assignment for Art.
Yosh! Time to get to work.