When Jarret Keene peered into the crowd from the stage at the 38th annual Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, he knew it was a watershed moment. There were journalists, editors, librarians, colleagues, and former students who’d gathered in Reno to witness his induction into this group of Nevada’s most distinguished literary figures.

The literary community had long ago embraced him as an author of short stories, children’s and young adult novels, editor of the Las Vegas Writes anthology, and scribe of more than 1,000 stories for newspapers and literary magazines about all things Vegas. On Nov. 7 at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), that community acknowledged him publicly. 

The UNLV assistant professor of English, who began amassing bylines with his music reviews and essays, had arrived — joining only a handful of UNLV faculty and alumni who have received the prestigious recognition.

His name will be forever listed alongside luminaries, including Mark Twain and Sarah Winnemucca, as well as standouts from the UNLV Department of English: Pulitzer Prize finalist and professor Doug Unger and emeritus professor Richard Wiley, co-founder of the MFA in creative writing program and the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute.

“It was wonderful to see my efforts to contribute to the literary scene validated after a quarter century and to see people who I had worked with, collaborated with, been mentored by, and mentored in return,” he said.

“There was no feeling quite like it, and I was proud to be representing UNLV and Las Vegas.”

Created and hosted by UNR, the Hall of Fame recognizes Nevada’s most notable writers and authors who have achieved commercial success and critical acclaim and demonstrated a meaningful connection to Nevada through writing themes or resident and community engagement.

Beyond Academia

Keene said his background as a freelance writer served him well as he transitioned to academia full time in 2014 when he joined the College of Liberal Arts. 

“What I learned from working in journalism is the ability to meet deadlines, to write quickly and efficiently, and for a general audience.

“I love researching and writing academic articles, but I feel like my experience at communicating to a mass audience gave me an extra tool in my tool belt. I can communicate across a range of audiences, whether we're talking about people who are really into music, food, or books in Las Vegas. My background as a journalist and a corporate communicator gives me the ability to reach people other than academics.”

Reaching a broad audience with his writing is what he aims to do, he said.

“With my novel Hammer of the Dogs [University of Nevada Press, 2023], I was seeking to entertain not just people who read sci-fi but to also engage the intellectual community of Las Vegas and beyond with a story that takes on heavy subject matter, specifically the use of drone technology in the Southwest.”

The post-apocalyptic adventure set in Las Vegas explores themes of identity, transformation, and maturity through the eyes of the 21-year-old heroine, Lash. “Her voice kept speaking to me, and that gave me the encouragement I needed to attempt the novel.” 

Only some topics need the novel treatment, however. Others can be sufficiently mined in a 5,000- to 10,000-word short story, he said. “The stories are a chance for me to explore a range of subjects, while the novel is a chance for me to explore one subject very deeply and with a lot of sustained energy.”

The way characters speak to him, relentlessly or not, helps him know the difference. “I give them 10,000 words to say something, and then I'm happy, and I think they're happy for me to move along.”

Las Vegas as a Genre

Whether writing dystopian fiction, Westerns, or sci-fi, Keene often sets his stories in Sin City, a place that has become its own popular genre, he said.

“Las Vegas is a fantasy narrative, a crime saga, a Western, and a romance. It's the perfect landscape to explore a genre or commercial writing. I don't think you can say the same thing about New York or L.A. Vegas is very new and multifaceted in a way that other cities just are not.”

He offers Hoover Dam, Nellis Air Force Base, Area 51, and Pahrump as prime examples of places that spur interesting, rich narratives. Mormon, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, and mob history are also worthy of exploration, he said.  

“Las Vegas is really the only place I feel worth writing about in regard to a genre of writing. We just keep going and growing.”

Local Literary Community

Asked how the burgeoning literary arts community helps shape a new image of Las Vegas, Keene paid homage to his colleagues. 

“You just need to read a novel by my colleague Doug Unger or a poem by [another Hall of Famer] Donald Revell, a poem by Claudia Keelan, or a novel by Wendy Chen,” he said.

“The counter-narrative is all around us. Vegas has so many more facets, and this Nevada literary community has been engaged in showing everything about this wonderful state that people tend to gloss over. It's like an epic series of books, and it never fails to fascinate.” 

He calls serving as editor of the Las Vegas Writes anthology for the last seven years his most important work to date. He relishes shining the spotlight on young, sometimes first-time writers as well as veteran scribes, bringing them together in a themed collection of essays and fiction designed to spark conversation around important topics. The most recent volume, number 16, called “Monsoon Season” features UNLV MFA students and bachelor’s level-alumni, along with veteran journalists and reporters. 

“It’s really important to bring together disparate voices, writers at every stage of their career, in a way that allows us to get a fuller, richer picture of what's happening here in the Valley,” he said.

Balancing Act

For Keene, teaching and writing are two sides of the same coin with equal weight and value. In some ways, one fuels the other. 

His teaching specialties include creative writing, pop culture, graphic novels, and 20th-century American literature. He describes his writing as obsessive, uninterrupted by movie-streaming binges or social media scrolling.

“I’d much rather write my own story than watch Netflix, and teaching is a chance for me to recharge my creative battery by watching these undergraduates get excited about comic books, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and the poetry of Sappho,” he said.

“With the students I get to discuss things that keep me excited, and with the writing I get to implement ideas, so they kind of feed off each other.”

With student-storytellers who have been influenced by contemporary media like manga (Japanese comics and graphic novels), anime, and TikTok, staying current is no easy feat. 

He weaves together the classic and the current to make his classes interesting and, in fact, so popular that some have a waiting list to enroll. In World Literature, students are required to compare and contrast a piece of contemporary media with a text that they’ve studied in class such as Plato's Allegory of the Cave and the movie The Matrix.

“I think young people are interested in verbal, visual storytelling. They know they have a place where they can talk about these things in my classroom and that I'm not going to judge them on their taste. So, I think that might explain the popularity of my comic book class and my World Lit class,” he said.

What’s Next 

With the Hall of Fame induction complete, Keene plans to tackle a project surprisingly not centered on Nevada.

“I'm writing a collection of essays about growing up in the '80s and how the popular culture of that decade shaped me and others,” he said. “I'm pretty excited about that. This is really one of the first books I've written that doesn't involve Nevada so much.”

He’s up for the challenge. “I love the notion that when you're a writer, you can write about anything, and if you do it well and make it interesting, people will read it. That's really what I'm committed to exploring. I want to write books that people, even those who aren’t experts, are going to read.”

He’s striving to become what he describes as a “pop scholar rather than a deep specialist,” writing works that can be appreciated by laypeople and academics alike. 

He promises not to stray too far from Nevada as a genre though. “I'm still going to write about Vegas and Nevada because I love this place. More importantly, I love the people here."