For over 12 years, Glotfelty read about Nevada by Nevadans, filling up ten binders with one page for each piece she read. Glotfelty estimated she read ten times more material than would eventually end up in Literary Nevada. The book, published by University of Nevada Press this August, is divided into 13 sections and contains 225 selections about the Silver State, with an introduction for each section and a contextual paragraph about each selection written by Glotfelty.
Are you originally from Nevada?
No, I was born in Montana and mostly grew up in the bay area, but we traveled around a lot-Hawaii, Germany, Colorado. I got this job (at UNR) in 1990 and luckily for me, it was love at first sight. I really wanted to not move around, vacation yeah, but not move again. I wanted to sink roots. The way for me to sink roots into a place is to read about it. So, I would ask people what I should read and they would tell me about Mark Twain and Robert Laxalt. But there wasn't much else. I thought, that's it, not a lot of literature, a rich history, but not a lot of literature. Then I started teaching a class called Western Literature and Nevada. The way I incorporated Nevada was to assign my students to find a piece about Nevada. I started researching it and there was more than I could put in a class. There was a really rich literary tradition.
What themes emerged, aside from Nevada itself?
The theme of luck, maybe it goes with the mining frontier, but also with gambling. The fickleness, but also the luckiness, of luck. Second chances goes along with that, a lot of people move to Nevada to take a second chance. Isolation, because of the spaces. Risk, which sort of goes along with luck. And chance goes along with luck, but also with destiny.
How was compiling this different from writing your own stuff or analyzing someone else's?
I think it's really, really different. With this, you have to have the skills of a packrat actually, and you have to have really good research skills. It's a sort of multi-pronged research net that one casts. You have to be organized-I'd say that's probably the number one skill. How do you keep track of what you read? What you want to read? I developed this literature review sheet to keep track, a sort of really complicated spreadsheet. I made a form-a New Literature Review form-with precise bibliography information.
How did you decide who to put in the book?
In the library, there's the Nevada Writer's Hall of Fame and clearly, I had to give special consideration to those writers who bodies of people had said were good. It had to be set in Nevada. That's what I wanted. I wanted to read imaginative representative work of this place. Then I had to use my own judgment. I'm an English teacher; I think I know what's good writing, although they had to be published authors. I wasn't really profiling emerging writers. Together, I'm hoping the whole volume will convey a sense of place and help us connect through a story telling and literary imagination.
You've worked on this for over 12 years. What's next?
My goal in doing the book was to essentially share the rich literary tradition of Nevada with Nevadans. I also really like to talk to people. It's one thing to say, "Oh, there's a lot of literature here" and another to say, "Look, here's the proof." I'd like to take it on the road. As I go, I'd like to contact the authors in the areas as I go there. If you read stories by people who appreciate it in a certain way, you look at Nevada with different eyes. Also, if you really enjoy strangeness, Nevada is a really strange place, with nuclear testing, gambling, all these crazy colored lights. It's a fun place. I think the rest of the nation views Nevada as a wasteland and as a cultural wasteland. OK, we have gambling, but where's the opera? I'm hoping to maybe change that image from wasteland to wonderland, or maybe something we don't want to trash. I guess I had a political agenda: Let's take care of this place where we live.