This year, at the 39th annual Nevada Writers Hall of Fame event, and Fil Corbitt will receive the Silver Pen Award. The 2026 Hall of Fame inductee is John L. Smith.
The Silver Pen Award was established in 1996 as part of the to recognize writers who work in or write about Nevada, are in their midcareer and have already shown substantial achievement.
The award is designed to honor their talent and encourage other emerging and midcareer writers. It is hoped that through their outstanding work they may one day be inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
This year’s Silver Pen awardees, Skenandore and Corbitt, are very different types of storytellers: one a novelist and the other a radio producer. Both are unique and have interesting backgrounds. Additionally, both have found ways to align their strengths and individuality with their work, creating memorable, meaningful and impactful books and radio shows.
“What is so neat about John, Fil and I is that our paths to writing are all different,” Skenandore said. “There really is no one way to do it! Success as a writer isn’t just one thing, it is so many different things. I feel if you can find out who you are and what you want to say and express it in a way that resonates with you, do that.”
Tickets to the event are $25 and are on sale now. Tickets can be purchased online by visiting the . The event will take place Friday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Auditorium inside the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center.
Get to know Amanda Skenandore
is an award-winning author of historical fiction and a retired registered nurse. Her books have been translated into multiple languages and garnered accolades from the American Library Association, Reader’s Digest, Silicon Valley Reads and Apple Books. She is a 2024 Nevada Arts Council literary fellow. Amanda lives in Las Vegas with her husband Steven and their pet turtle, Lenore.
She said she knew early on that she wanted to do something meaningful with her life.
“In college, I knew I wanted to earn a degree that would be transferable to any location,” Skenandore said. “Nursing fit the bill. It also turns out that my career in nursing helped grow my writing career.”
Skenandore said that early on, she frequently worked the night shift.
“Sometimes the nursing staff would get a quiet hour at 4 a.m., when we’d have 10 to 30 minutes to get caught up with our charting,” she said. “Sometimes, we’d catch a short break. During these breaks, I’d draft short stories. I think in many ways the stories I was writing helped me decompress from my shift.”
After working in nursing for 3 years and drafting many short stories, Skenandore decided to take a writing class at UNLV. It was in this class that she decided to leave nursing and take up writing full time.
“At the time, I wasn’t loving my job in nursing,” she said. “I needed a change in my life. I told my husband about my dream. He was 100% supportive. I took a year off work, wrote a novel and began taking the next steps to get it published. This took way longer than I intended. As a result, I went back to nursing in a new position that worked well for me, was the right fit and gave me the time I needed to keep writing.”
“” was Skenandore’s first novel. She said it took her six to 12 months to write and five years to revise and get picked up by a publisher.
Skenandore said it was during her work as a nurse, which she did for another 13 years, that she really saw the humanity in something. She said working in nursing has nurtured the soil from which her writing can grow.
“In my writing, I pull from all of the human interactions I have experienced and have seen others experience,” she said. “I see the world in this way; in the interpersonal moments and exchanges.”
. She said she wants her readers to travel alongside her characters and see and feel the things they experience.
“I am a big history fan,” she said. “In particular, I am interested in how different historical events have shaped the people who experienced them, especially the people who have been written out of history: women, people of color and other marginalized groups. There is so much we can learn from the past, so much that is mirrored in our society today. For me, writing creates a safe space to explore these topics.”
Skenandore said receiving the Silver Pen award filled her with complete surprise and absolute joy.
“The day I got the call about the Silver Pen Award, I was having a day,” she said. “I’d been experiencing peaks and valleys as I worked on something new. My phone rang and I was informed about the Silver Pen. In that moment, I left the valley and was shot back up to the top of the proverbial writing peak! What a time to get the call. It was the boost I needed to encourage me to keep going. These reminders mean the world to me. They help validate that I am doing something important.”
She added, “As writers, we are hoping to make a connection with our readers. The spontaneous encounters with readers who tell me my work really touched them are what make writing so rewarding. As big as Nevada is in landmass, the writing community in the state is pretty small. There are so many great writers to admire. It is a profound honor to receive this award.”
About the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame
The Nevada Writers Hall of Fame was conceived by Marilyn Melton, former president of the Friends of the University Libraries, in 1988. She envisioned two purposes: an annual event honoring Nevada’s finest writers and a stimulus to encourage excellence among emerging writers in the Silver State.
The first selection committee met at Melton’s home and chose Robert Laxalt and Walter Van Tilburg Clark as the recipients. Since then, the Hall of Fame has become an annual event.
The names of all the authors who have been inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame are now prominently displayed on a wall of honor in the Leslie Harvey and Robert George Whittemore Tower Entry and Reception Gallery of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center.
Honorees are selected based on their body of work, critical recognition, and a strong connection to Nevada through the themes of their writing or residence in the state.
The Silver Pen Award was established in 1996 as part of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame to recognize writers who work in or write about Nevada, are in their midcareer and have already shown substantial achievement.
The award is designed to honor their talent and encourage other emerging and midcareer writers. It is hoped that through their outstanding work they may one day be inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
