Maile Chapman, a Las Vegas-based author and professor of English at UNLV, recently published “The Spoil,” her first novel in 15 years, following “Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto,” released in 2011.

In this episode of Library Talks, acclaimed author Maile Chapman discusses The Spoil, her first novel in 15 years, with Larissa MacFarquhar of The New Yorker. The Spoil is a gripping and often terrifying story of familial grief in which the past is both elusive and paralyzing, and daily realities give way to mysteries between science and spirit.

Founded in 2009 by UNLV alumna Kathryn Kruse, Neon Lit began without a name, just as a loose gathering of Master of Fine Arts students reading their work to one another, as Wright describes it. By 2010, the series adopted its moniker, and over the past 16 years it’s expanded beyond the university corridors into a broader civic space, drawing audiences hungry for literary community.

A selling point of poetry is that it expands the ways we can access some of life’s most vital truths. For poet and longtime UNLV professor Claudia Keelan, poetry is an art of continual present-tense attention to the world, in its largest and smallest movements — you never know what detail will yield a new insight. April being National Poetry Month is our pretext for interviewing Keelan, but the calendar is beside the point. As she notes, “any second can produce a poem.”

Christmas trees might seem timeless today, but American decorating habits have shifted dramatically over the decades. Long before tinsel, flocking or LED lights, winter greenery carried deep symbolic meaning.

Who is Santa Claus and what's his origin story? Why do we decorate a pine tree with lights? What is Yule and why does it have a log? When did gift-giving become a thing for Christmas? They're the questions you probably have or get from your kids every holiday season. Dr. Katherine Walker wants to make sure you're armed with the answers.