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The program impacts 1,200 high school students annually throughout Southern Nevada. Just Voices enhances the literacy of students by engaging them in writing about social issues important to them. It not only features literature that grapples with issues of social justice, but also, it asks our students to write about these issues. Our objective is to raise curiosity in literature and the realization among students that effective writing skills can be a powerful tool to make a positive impact on the world. Lee Barnes is the author for the 2008/2009 schoolyear.
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Lee Barnes lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where he teaches English and creative
writing at the College of Southern Nevada. He graduated the University of Nevada Las Vegas as the Outstanding Senior in the College of Arts and Letters, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, and later graduated Arizona State University with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative writing (fiction). Prior to entering the field of higher education, he worked a deputy sheriff, a narcotics agent, a private investigator, a construction laborer and a casino employee. He served in Vietnam as a member of Special Forces.
His fiction focuses largely on working-class characters of the west and southwest, many of whom are war veterans. The work may be best described as Post-modern Naturalism as his narratives often deal with external events that subsume his characters as they try to deal with their sense of disaffection and negotiate a path through contemporary life. He has published some forty short stories and essays and four books. "The Run," one of his stories has been adapted to short film and was released in 2006, and another, "The Mind Is its own Place," is under contract with an independent film company. He has a fifth book (short story collection) under contract with the University of Nevada Press. Currently he is polishing the final draft of novel set in home front during the last year of WWII, and is writing a nonfiction account of the 2003 shootout at Harrah’s Casino in Laughlin between the Hells Angels and Mongols otorcycle clubs.
His short fiction has been awarded the Willamette Fiction Award and the Arizona
Authors Association Fiction Award. Gunning for Ho, his first book, was a finalist for The Texas Institute of Letters First Fiction Award, and his Las Vegas novel, The Lucky, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Fiction Award. |
Authors for the 2007/2008 schoolyear were Gerda Weissmann Klein, Ana Castillo and Dan Chaon.
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Gerda Weissman Klein |
Ana Castillo |
Dan Chaon |
With appropriate funding, Just Voices hopes to hold a Las Vegas Literary Summit. Promising students from each of the classes will be invited, along with their teachers, to participate in the Summit. Community leaders will also be invited to attend the panel discussion and luncheon. The highlight of the event will be when the three participating world-class writers join in a dynamic exchange of ideas with participating Clark County high school students, exploring such compelling topics as writing to precipitate change, impacting the world as a writer, writing under threat of personal harm, and the meaning of freedom. A documentary is also planed which will integrate excerpts from the panel discussion, background material on the writers, classroom discussions, and hand-picked interviews. The film will be made available to students each year via the Internet, expanding its reach both locally and globally. Specifically, CCSD will air the film on its closed circuit TV station (ITFS), and it will become an integral part of the Just Voices curriculum resources going forward.
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"JUST VOICES is an extraordinary program that brings students in meaningful contact with working writers whose writings speak to their experiences. In my few days in Las Vegas, I was able to connect--one classroom at a time--with high school and middle school kids, most of whom are immigrants (or children of immigrants) and navigating two or more cultures. Exhilarating…."
Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban, a finalist for the National Book Award;The Aguero Sisters; and Monkey Hunting. |
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“Just Voices is doing essential, passionate work -- bringing the power and relevance of literature into Nevada schools, by showing that art, ethics, morality, and personal power are all connected, and introducing a new generation to the beauty of the word.”
George Saunders, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and author of Pastoralia, Civil War Land,In Bad Decline (both New York Times Notable Books) and In Persuasion Nation. |
Up to 25 English and Social Studies teachers implement the Just Voices curriculum resources in their classrooms during spring semesters. Students in the classrooms read, write, and discuss literature of social conscience, and teachers implement activities (around topics such as censorship, democracy, ethics and the media, civil liberties, etc.) developed by the Literary Resource Development Committee. The format allows teachers to use research-based instructional methods to read and discuss the authors’ work in ways that are exciting and inspiring to the students. Just Voices provides time for participants to create and reflect upon their own writing, and to respond to the writing of others, thus becoming fully engaged in the process.
Leading writers of social conscience, selected from the Cities of Asylum and/or from a group of top American authors, are invited to speak to and engage all participating students and teachers. These writers come into our schools for three and a half days, and then participate in the Literary Summit.
Students and teachers in the Just Voices project share and communicate their ideas using web-based tools. The Just Voices real-time online forum presents students with a number of benefits not afforded by traditional classroom instruction. Students feel they are part of a much larger cutting-edge community. These students are not limited to their school; they communicate and their ideas across district classrooms
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