Arts Council presents two concerts

Michael P. Branch is a writer, humorist, environmentalist, father, and desert rat who lives with his wife and two young daughters in the western Great Basin Desert. His work includes nine published books, one of which is the Pulitzer Prize-nominated “John Muir’s Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa.”

Branch will be in Fallon on Saturday for a literary reading at the Oats Park Arts Center. This event is free. The Arts Bar and galleries open at 5 p.m., and the literary reading begins at 5:30 p.m.

His recent books include: “Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness” (2016), “Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert” (2017), “The Best Read Naturalist: Nature Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson” (2017), “How to Cuss in Western: And Other Missives from the High Desert” (2018), and “On the Trail of the Jackalope” (2022).

In his new book, “On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer,” Branch explores the never-before-told story of the horned rabbit – the myths, the hoaxes, the very real scientific breakthrough it inspired – and how it became a cultural touchstone of the American West.

This reading is presented in cooperation with the Churchill Library Association and supported by Nevada Humanities.

The first free Concert in the Park is June 17. The concert features Paul Thorn, who will perform at Oats Park Centennial Stage beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Among those who value originality, inspiration, eccentricity and character – as well as talent that hovers somewhere on the outskirts of genius, the story of Paul Thorn is already familiar.

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, raised among the same spirits (and some of the actual people) who nurtured the young Elvis generations before, Thorn has rambled down back roads and jumped out of airplanes, worked for years in a furniture factory, battled four-time world champion boxer Roberto Duran on national television, performed on stages with Bonnie Raitt, Mark Knopfler, Sting, and John Prine, among many others, and made some of the most emotionally restless yet fully accessible music of our time, and appeared multiple times on the Billboard Top 100.