Â鶹ӳ»­

How do you make a small fortune as a writer? Start with a large fortune.

What do you call a writer with health insurance? Married.

I’m an accomplished writer, but my autobiography didn’t sell at all. It’s the story of my life.

These one-liners, which are representative of a wonderfully deep body of humor highlighting the many challenges of being a writer, make the point well enough. Very few writers do their work because they anticipate notoriety, or expect material reward. I once did an event up at Lake Tahoe with Utah desert writer Terry Tempest Williams, who writes from the other side of the Great Basin. In the Q&A following our reading, a hopeful young woman asked Terry, “What’s your best advice for an aspiring writer?” The audience waited in intense silence to receive sage guidance from a writer who is genuinely talented, generous, and wise. After a long pause Terry offered the most pragmatic and honest writing advice she could: “Don’t quit your day job.”

Why, then, do we write? Because we can’t help ourselves. Because the challenges of writing are so compelling and addictive. Because every story, every sentence, every image, appears to us as a fascinating problem to be solved. Because, while a writer’s work is never entirely successful, even our abject failures can produce moments of beauty, insight, or humor. Because, in a world in which folks often talk past one another, writing offers the irresistible possibility of meaningful, honest connection: a shift in perspective, a new appreciation for a place or person, an openness to a fresh idea, a renewed means to see and celebrate what matters most. In my experience, the work of the writer must be its own reward.

Like many writers, I do much of my work in relative isolation, without the camaraderie inherent in a collaborative art form like filmmaking. That is one of many reasons why the Â鶹ӳ»­ Writers Hall of Fame (NWHOF) has meant so much to so many of us for so long: it promotes a sense of community and mutual appreciation among practitioners who otherwise labor in solitude. And it is important that this sense of ourselves as a family of Â鶹ӳ»­ writers extends intergenerationally, because early NWHOF inductees are literary artists whose work I’ve studied, taught, and been inspired by throughout my career. The superb artistic craft and moral courage of Mark Twain, Sarah Winnemucca, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Robert Laxalt, and many others has established a lineage that extends to the work of contemporary NWHOF inductees including Shaun Griffin, Gailmarie Pahmeier, and Willy Vlautin.

In addition to providing a vibrant sense of community to writers and readers in our state, the encouragement and recognition NWHOF offers also serve as a necessary counterweight to a dazzling range of misrepresentations of our state. In the national media, depictions of Â鶹ӳ»­ often appear cartoonish, as if 110,000 square miles of culturally and environmentally diverse territory should be reduced to little more than the surreal indulgences of the Las Vegas strip and a fleeting analysis of swing state demographics once every four years. But is there much to be hoped for when even the most reliable national media routinely pronounce the name of our state “Nevahduh”? (My former student, the brilliant Â鶹ӳ»­ novelist Claire Vaye Watkins, once referred to this mispronunciation issue as “the shibboleth of my people.”) Misunderstandings of the Great Basin landscape, if anything, run deeper still. Our home desert is often represented as worthless, barren wasteland—a summary judgement that reveals far more about the limitations of the folks doing the judging than it does about the Great Basin itself, which is vast and biodiverse and beautiful beyond words. (As Twain once observed, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”) Part of our job as Â鶹ӳ»­ writers is to explore and celebrate the complexity and grandeur of our home desert, and to challenge bleak, oversimplified representations of it. 

I appreciate that NWHOF builds bridges across NSHE institutions and, even more important, fosters connections between our state’s system of higher education and the many authors, booksellers, editors, and field journalists who work outside that system. We understand that a truly nurturing community must leave its doors standing open, both to the inspiring wild country that surrounds us, and also to the budding literary artists who will follow us. I want to thank the University Libraries for the care that goes into curating this remarkable community, and extend special thanks to Maggie Ressel for her generosity and skill in coordinating this year’s NWHOF event. I also want to congratulate this year’s Silver Pen Award winner, Laura Newman, whose debut short story collection, The Franklin Avenue Rookery for Wayward Babies, is an absolute gem. When we all gather on November 1 for the NWHOF ceremony (which is always a hoot, so please join us!), we’ll be celebrating the many ways Â鶹ӳ»­ writers inspire and support one another as each of us struggles to improve our craft. And when I’m asked “What is it like to be an aspiring writer?” (is there any other kind of writer?), I’ll simply reply: It’s difficult to put into words.

Â鶹ӳ»­ the author

Michael P. Branch is University Foundation Professor of English, Emeritus at the Â鶹ӳ»­. An award-winning western, environmental, and humor writer, he has published ten books and more than 300 essays. On Nov. 1, 2024, he will be inducted into the Â鶹ӳ»­ Writers Hall of Fame. For more on Mike’s work, please visit t.