Join Nevada Humanities and celebrate the written word in all of its forms in this signature, annual festival kicking off at 11 am with a keynote by author Anthony Doerr and continuing with readings, book signings, and family-friendly activities across the California Avenue corridor.

All events are free. Reservations required for selected events. For more information and to view the full schedule of programs, please visit Nevada Humanities.

Neil Kelley and Randy Irmis will discuss new discoveries from Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park and other Nevada fossil sites that shed new light on the lives of Nevada’s state fossil, Shonisaurus. What did they eat? How did they reproduce? When did they go extinct?  All these questions and more will be answered! 

Neil Kelley is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist with a special interest in extinct marine reptiles that were the top ocean predators during the Mesozoic (the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’). He has participated in fossil excavations in China and across North America, including multiple sites in Nevada, and worked in museum collections around the world. Currently his work includes projects in Nevada, California, Alaska, and Tennessee. His research has been featured in High Country News, Smithsonian Magazine Online and on National Pubic Radio. He completed his PhD at the University of California, Davis and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution before coming to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Randall Irmis is Curator of Paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, and Professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics, both part of the University of Utah, where he has worked since 2009. He received his BS in Geology (Emphasis in Paleontology) from Northern Arizona University in 2004, and his PhD in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008. Randy’s scientific research asks how animals with backbones (and the larger ecosystems they lived in) evolved through deep time, particularly in response to climate change and other global events. This work investigates fossil ecosystems and environments that span in age from over 300 million years old to less than 10,000 years old, and has resulted in many years of fieldwork in Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Argentina, and Ethiopia.

The moviola becomes a “time machine” that transforms trucks into dinosaurs. – Robert Smithson 

Artist Robert Smithson (1938-73) is known for his monumental earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) situated along the shoreline of Great Salt Lake. He is also known for bringing the deep past to the present world of art, positing a world populated with prehistoric motifs: dinosaurs and sea monsters. Speaker Hikmet Sidney Loe will discuss Smithson’s childhood fascination with creatures from past geologic eras, which he carried into and employed in his adult artistic endeavors. Eschewing one specific geographic region and blending high and low images—cutouts and postcards with the contemporary art of the 1970s—he created unique worlds filled with the wonders of metaphor and imagination.  

Hikmet Sidney Loe is Assistant Visiting Professor in art history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is an author, curator, and public speaker whose work examines the changeable nature of the earth and addresses our perceptual and cultural constructs of the land. Her first book, The Spiral Jetty Encyclo: Exploring Robert Smithson’s Earthwork through Time and Place (2017) won the 15 Bytes Book Award for Art Book (2018). Her next book, The Sun Tunnels Encyclo: Exploring Nancy Holt’s Earthwork through Perception and Site is scheduled to be published in 2026 by The University of Utah Press.

Join Tuan Andrew Nguyen as he retraces the making of We Were Lost in Our Country. Now in the Nevada Museum of Art permanent collection, this moving-image work tells the remarkable story of the Ngurrara Canvas II (1997), which was made by a group of forty men and four women from the Walmajarri, Wangkatjunga, Mangala and Juwaliny communities and language groups. Through interviews with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Nguyen conveys the story of the Ngurrara Canvas II, exploring themes of personal agency, inherited trauma, and intergenerational transmission.

Courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York; Photo: Harry Vu

More fossil ichthyosaur specimens have been found in the Triassic rocks of the Humboldt and Shoshone Mountains than anywhere else in Nevada. In the summer of 1905, portions of 25 specimens were recovered from South American Canyon in the Humboldts and some 37 specimens were identified in West Union Canyon of the Shoshones, where Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park is located. Join David K. Smith as he explores Annie Alexander’s 1905 collecting expedition and the development of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.

David spent 19 years with the Education and Outreach unit of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) as a Visual Communications Specialist, retiring in 2015. In his last few years at UCMP he was the staff archivist on a grant to catalog the Museum’s archives and became interested in its history as a result. Today he continues to volunteer at the Museum, writing online finding aids, fielding archives requests, and pursuing historical projects that strike his fancy.

Aaron Draplin is a popular logo and brand designer, and the man behind Draplin Design Co (DDC). His clients have included Nike, Apple, and former President Barack Obama. Draplin will talk about his graphic design practice, logo design, and how he’s been able to attract big clients by working on fun projects for his own brand.

Photo of Aaron Draplin by Samson Hatae

Join Nik Hafermaas, an internationally recognized and award-winning designer, media artist, and educational leader from Berlin, Germany to hear about the design process leading up to Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada.

*Admission includes access to First Thursday

Join Brazilian artists Tadáskía and Ana Cláudia Almeida for a lively conversation about their work. The discussion will be moderated by independent curator Keyna Eleison. 

(LEFT): Ana Cláudia Almeida. Image courtesy of the artist and Quadra, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Gabriel Bsa; (RIGHT): Tadáskía. Image courtesy of the artist and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Joanes Barauna.

Join Martin Sander, one of the world’s leading ichthyosaur paleontologists from Bonn, Germany, as he details his 30-year odyssey excavating fossils in Nevada’s Augusta Mountains. Hear his stories of mountaineering for fossils, digging out tons of pounds of ichthyosaur bones, and transporting them to the laboratory via helicopter and in a beer truck. Learn what Sander’s study of these giant animals teaches us about evolution, life on earth, and Nevada’s place in the global scientific community.

Martin Sander divides his research between excavating sea reptiles from the Age of Dinosaurs in Nevada and elsewhere around the globe and understanding dinosaurs as living animals. These interests converge on understanding the evolution of giants in the ocean and on land.

*Registration includes access to the Summer Block Party beginning at 4pm! 

Join Martin Sander, one of the world’s leading ichthyosaur paleontologists from Bonn, Germany, as he details his 30-year odyssey excavating fossils in Nevada’s Augusta Mountains. Hear his stories of mountaineering for fossils, digging out tons of pounds of ichthyosaur bones, and transporting them to the laboratory via helicopter and in a beer truck. Learn what Sander’s study of these giant animals teaches us about evolution, life on earth, and Nevada’s place in the global scientific community.

Martin Sander divides his research between excavating sea reptiles from the Age of Dinosaurs in Nevada and elsewhere around the globe and understanding dinosaurs as living animals. These interests converge on understanding the evolution of giants in the ocean and on land.

*Registration includes access to the Summer Block Party beginning at 4pm!