Review-Journal columnist Smith earns Silver Pen Award

Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith won the Silver Pen Award on Thursday, recognizing his decades-long writing career in Nevada.

The award was established in 1996 by Friends of the University of Nevada, Reno Library as part of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame to recognize writers who are in midcareer but have shown substantial achievement. One or two writers win the award annually.

Nominees must have a strong Nevada connection and have received critical recognition from colleagues and other writers.

The organizers hope the recipients will be inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Smith was recognized with Terri Farley, a Reno-based novelist, at an event last week on campus attended by more than 100 people. Farley is a wild-horse advocate whose writing targets children and young adult readers.

Both read from their work at last week's event. Smith chose to read three different columns; one was about an Elvis impersonator.

"It was really pleasing to know that people are reading the work and they're appreciating the kind of effort that goes into crafting the stories," Smith said. "It's not just thrown together day after day. It's something I work hard at."

Smith and Farley join the ranks of writers such as Sally Denton, an author and investigative journalist who won the award in 2003, and William Fox, a poet, artist, critic, editor and publisher who won in 1999.

"I'm very honored to be included in that group," Smith said.

The award came as a surprise to Smith, a Henderson native, who has written about 5,000 columns and a dozen books in his career.

His books often focus on Las Vegas personalities, such as Mayor Oscar Goodman in "Of Rats and Men: Oscar Goodman's Life from Mob Mouthpiece to Mayor of Las Vegas" and casino mogul Steve Wynn in "Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn."

Smith began at the Review-Journal as a sports columnist in 1985 and started writing a news column in 1988. His column appears on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He also writes a weekly column that runs in rural Nevada newspapers.

He won for the "general overall quality of his writing and the things he has written about in Las Vegas," said Millie Mitchell, director of development for university libraries.

"He's done a lot for Nevada," she said.

Author Darrell Spencer was inducted into the hall of fame for his collections of short stories about his hometown, Las Vegas.

Spencer, who is now the Stocker Professor in Creative Writing at Ohio University, attended Las Vegas High School and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Smith struggled to find the right words to characterize this achievement in his career and joked about the "mid-career recognition."

"I'm 50, I'd like to get 30 more years out of my typewriter," he said. "I'm a guy who really likes to tell stories. It's really a part of who I am."

Contact Kristi Jourdan at kjourdan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.