M.C. Hammer at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe on Jan. 7 at 8pm.

Tickets are $40.

For more South Shore Room information, show times, ticket prices and reservations, call 800.786.8208.

Nathan Owens Motown After Dark at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe in Stateline.

Tickets are $25.

For more South Shore Room information, show times, ticket prices and reservations, call 800.786.8208.

Manny Pacquiao & Band Live will be at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe on Nov. 16 at 7:30pm.

Tickest are $25 and $50.

For more South Shore Room information, show times, ticket prices and reservations, call 800.786.8208.

Missoula Children’s Theater production of “Treasure Island” is Nov. 20 at 2pm and 6pm at South Tahoe Middle School multipurpose room. Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for children/seniors.

For more information, call (530) 542.3632.

Poet and professor of English at Sierra Nevada College, Karen Terrey, will share her thoughts on how one lives as a writer and how she works with other writers to inspire and motivate.

Since spending the summer of 2009 studying poetry in Prague, she finds inspiration for her efforts to help build literary community in Tahoe from the underground writing movement called Samizdat that resisted Communist rule in Prague. She’ll also perform a short reading of some of her historical and regional poetry. She encourages the audience to engage with questions and comments.

Terrey teaches creative writing in Truckee through her business Tangled Roots Writing. She facilitates creative writing workshops and one-on one-coaching with project-focused writers to help guide creative process and improve craft. At SNC, she teaches classes in Freshman Composition, American Literature, and Creative Writing. She is also poetry editor for a literary arts journal, Quay, published in print and online twice a year.

Terrey received her bachelor’s from University of Vermont in biology and environmental studies and her M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College.

Her poetry explores boundaries of neighborhood and relationships between people and place. Some of her poems have been published in Moonshine Ink, Sierra Nevada Review, Autumn Sky, Word Riot, Rhino and Edge. She is the recipient of a Sierra Arts Endowment Grant in 2009 and a John Woods Scholarship to the Prague Summer Program.

To learn more about Terrey’s efforts to build literary community in Lake Tahoe, see her blog at www.karenaterrey.blogspot.com and Tangled Roots Writing on Facebook.

The event is Nov. 13 from 10am-noon, Prim Library, Sierra Nevada College, 999 Tahoe Blvd., Incline Village.

Fee: $3 optional continental breakfast.

Threats. Murder. Revenge. Todd Borg’s eighth novel — “Tahoe Heat” featuring his long-standing protagonist private detective Owen McKenna — involves a fatal fall at Lake Tahoe’s Cave Rock, encoded piano strings, and a wild mustang named Heat.

Borg’s series of mystery thrillers set exclusively around Lake Tahoe will be the featured topic of the next Fireside Chat, hosted by Andy Whyman, Nove. 18 at 7pm in Sierra Nevada College’s Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences, rooms 139/141.

Stunned by the beauty of the second highest big lake in the world, Borg and his wife moved from Minnesota to Lake Tahoe in 1990. While he had written short stories, reviews, articles, and three novels before moving to the region, the dramatic Tahoe landscape gave Borg the idea for a series of novels with a detective protagonist who lived at Lake Tahoe. The result was Owen McKenna, an ex-cop with a tragic background, who moved from San Francisco to the mountains to study art and earn a slightly more genteel living as a private detective. McKenna works out of a rented office space on Kingsbury Grade on the South Shore, and lives with Spot, his Harlequin Great Dane, in a tiny log cabin (500 square feet) that sits 1,000 feet above the East Shore. All eight of the Owen McKenna Mystery Thrillers are available for check-out at SNC’s Prim Library and the Incline Village Library.

Borg’s work has won numerous awards including the Ben Franklin Award for Best Mystery of the Year and the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association’s Best Thriller of the Year. A prolific lecturer and speaker, Borg also teaches at Lake Tahoe Community College. His three-day writing workshop The Hook, the Twist, and the Cliffhanger is open to any aspiring fiction writer and focuses on the craft of writing entertaining fiction, including character development, the rising plot curve, and critical aspects of writing effective prose such as scene construction, point-of-view, and dialogue.

For more information on the event, contact Shelia Leijon, IVGID Seniors Program Coordinator, at (775) 832.1310, shelia_leijon@ivgid.org, or Debi Noonan, SNC director of Special Events, at (775) 831.1314, ext. 7420, dnoonan@sierranevada.edu.

Caregiving is a difficult and often challenging role that one can undertake, and taking the opportunity to share information and feel connected to others who are providing care is a vital step to perform this task to the best of your ability. Take the opportunity on Nov. 11 from 5:30-7:30pm, South Lake Tahoe Senior Center 3050 Highway 50, South Lake Tahoe to become connected and rejuvenated at your local support group.

Refreshments will be served. Free respite care is available to qualified caregivers. Pre-authorization is required for respite services. Questions? Contact the Family Caregiver Support Program at (530) 621.6151.

The National Great American Smokeout, which asks smokers to give up tobacco for 24 hours in hopes that they will quit for good, is Nov. 18.

Smoking cigarettes remains the No. 1 preventable cause of premature disease and death in the United States, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 21 percent of Americans and 14 percent of Californians are smokers.

The Great American Smokeout is a national event sponsored by the American Cancer Society, traditionally on the third Thursday in November each year.

Resources include calling 800-NO-BUTTS or going to www.californiasmokershelpline.org. The American Cancer Society also has stop smoking resources on their website at www.cancer.org.

The Tahoe Yacht Club Foundation’s 39th annual Concours d’Elegance is Aug. 12-13 at the Sierra Boat Company in Carnelian Bay. For more information on the show and the 2011 Wooden Boat Week visit www.LakeTahoeConcours.com

Sustainable Tahoe’s first basinwide green networking event in South Lake Tahoe is Nov. 18 from 5:30-8:30pm at Embassy Suites.

Regional leaders, owners, staff and advocates of green technology, conservation, alternative transportation, clean energy and sustainable innovation will unite to network and start the next wave of action toward sustainability.

The event will focus on bringing these community leaders together to meet, collaborate, and share resources under one vision of creating a sustainable destination of the Lake Tahoe basin.

The event will include a tour of recent sustainability initiatives by the Embassy Suites. The tour will also look at Explore Tahoe.

A 2011 Tahoe Expo is being planned for the summer to showcase possibilities for a new Tahoe economy.

For more information, go to www.SustainableTahoe.org or call (775) 883.0831.