How Las Vegas helped shape this storyteller

By April Corbin

Sunday, May 7, 2017 | 2 a.m.

The Las Vegas literary scene is building on good bones. UNLV’s 10-year-old Black Mountain Institute has long been a force, from developing voices in the MFA program and hosting Pulitzer- and Nobel-winning authors to sheltering foreign writers from persecution. And for 16 years, the Vegas Valley Book Festival has celebrated “written, spoken and illustrated word” with readings, workshops and keynotes by the likes of John Irving, Chuck Palahniuk, Sarah Vowell and Michael Chabon.

Laura McBride doesn’t necessarily see herself as part of that established literary community, but her novels are no doubt helping shape a national audience’s perspective of the city. Her 2014 debut novel, “We Are Called to Rise,” thrilled audiences throughout the country and exposed them to a suburban side of Las Vegas typically overshadowed by the Strip. Her sophomore effort, “ ’Round Midnight,” follows the lives of four women spanning six decades, connected through experiences at a classic Las Vegas nightclub.

We caught up with the College of Southern Nevada professor on the brink of her new novel’s debut.

Both of your novels are set in Las Vegas. What makes it a great setting?

There are stories everywhere. We’re a boom town — millions of people coming to live in a really short time. They come because they are poor, or they’re rich, to work, or to take a break. It’s an eclectic and exciting and dynamic mix that has come here. What makes us different from boom towns that traditionally accept a bunch of new people is that we were a really small desert town before. … That creates the environment that can be beautiful, that can be explosive, that can be violent. Lucky me as a writer; I have no end of story ideas.

Do you think there’s a hunger for more stories about Las Vegas told from a local’s perspective?

I don’t think there’s a hunger. In marketing my books outside of Nevada, being set in Las Vegas is certainly not a bonus. It’s hopefully not a negative. I think that’s because I am writing between literary and popular fiction. The people who are reading are readers who read a lot. They love to read novels. Those people aren’t the people who come to Las Vegas. Sometimes. But a lot of people who read books like mine think they have an aversion to Las Vegas.

What brought you here?

I followed my husband, who was just coming for a year. We were living in Paris, which was very different in 1987. He came to help out aging parents and had a brother here. Then, life catches up, and he ended up needing to be here longer. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact I was going to be here, that my opportunities career-wise would be different. This was the ’80s and ’90s. ... Things felt much more isolated. ... But I’m highly invested in being a happy person and having a happy life. I figured it out. I now see all the ways living in Las Vegas — living somewhere I maybe would not have chosen — has given me these experiences.

How does being an educator influence your writing?

There are so many ways CSN affects me. First, it’s incredibly diverse. I teach five classes a semester; three in the summer. That’s a lot of people who move in and out, and a lot of different stories. We have people who are young and old, people who have different educational backgrounds and different goals. There’s no doubt that CSN, particularly the students, have enriched my vision. … Teaching composition, basic writing and introductory literature, I have a lot of students who are eager and a lot who are just suffering through their English class. A big part of my job is to motivate them. And it’s funny, I didn’t realize I was teaching myself at the same time. All those tricks to get them to write and to consistently think of their writing? They embedded themselves. I am more of a persistent and determined writer from teaching writing.