Join us from Yucca-to-Wonder Valleys, in the hi-desert, for a new, completely free literary and music festival brought to you by the founders of Bombay Beach Lit Fest, celebrating the vibrant artistic culture of the desert communities surrounding Joshua Tree National Park!
WHAT
The Hi-Desert Lo-Fi Lit Fest is a free weekend of literary panels, workshops, and readings; special events such as breathwork and interactive art installations; three nights of both local bands and internationally renowned musicians; and a closing party focused on filmmaking and screenwriting.
WHEN
March 20th, 7pm, to March 22nd, 7pm—48 hours of inspiration and fun!
WHERE
Our venues include The Palms of Wonder Valley, Z Club in Joshua Tree, Mojave Gold in Yucca Valley, and in Twentynine Palms both Corner 62 (brought to you by the Hi-Desert Times and Very Very), and Tin Town.
Our full schedule is still in the works, so make sure to check back for any updates!
SCHEDULE
FRIDAY MARCH 20
The Palms | Wonder Valley
OPENING PARTY
Opening Party with readings and music by Red Light Lit and musical performances by C’est Claire and The Sibleys.
SATURDAY MARCH 21
Z Club | Joshua Tree
ONE MINUTE MEMOIR WORKSHOP
9am
Rachel Resnick – Join writer and writing coach Rachel Resnick in this generative exercise to kick start your memoir.
THE ART OF MEMOIR
10am
David Martinez, Karen Palmer, Kristi Coulter, Jen Pastiloff, Rachel Resnick, moderated by Emily Rapp Black – What does it take to write a compelling story of your life? How do you begin? These award-winning memoir writers will share their tips and tricks for translating your life on the page for a reader.
WILD WOMEN TELL TALES
11am
Kat Talley-Jones, Ruth Nolan, Jardine Libaire – This desert themed reading highlights local women writing about life, love, and art in a landscape of extremes.
BANNED BOOKS
12pm
Joel Rane, Gia Ruiz, moderated by Patrick Stewart – With the rise of book bans and challenges to intellectual freedom sweeping much of the nation, we’ll discuss the implications of these challenges through the lens of librarians, writers, and readers.
CRAFT OF TRAVEL WRITING
1pm
Samantha Dunn, Maggie Downs, Suzanne Roberts, moderated by Suzanne Van Atten – Seasoned travel writers discuss what makes a great travel story soar and what makes a bad one sink.
LESSONS FROM THE PAST
2pm
Elizabeth L. Silver, Jasmin Hakes, Abigail Stewart, Rob Roberge, moderated by Emily Rapp Black – Historical fiction writers discuss writing from the intersection of historical fact and literary imagination.
MUSIC WRITING PANEL
3pm
Ben Schafer, Patrick O’Neil, Cary Baker, Eleanor Whitney, Martha Bayne, Jim Ruland, moderated by Rob Roberge – Music moves us in ways that few other modalities do. Explore how musicians translate emotion and story into lyrics and song.
NOT YOUR PARENTS' NOIR
4pm
David Olsen, Jim Ruland, Brian Townsley, Tod Goldberg, moderated by Bruce Craven – Listen to acclaimed writers discuss the roots of noir, and how they keep the form fresh and relevant for today’s readers.
EVENING MUSICAL ACTS
7pm
Mojave Gold @ Yucca Valley
Doors open at Mojave Gold in Yucca Valley for a musical extravaganza including the Chicago-based band The Hitchcock Brunettes, local treasure LANDROID, Conan Neutron and the Secret Friends, and the legendary mike watt + the missingmen.
*In addition to free programming, celebrated Tarot specialist Melinda Lee Holmes will be providing personalized readings for a fee to those who would like to partake, time window TBA
SUNDAY MARCH 22
Corner 62 & Hi-Desert Times | Twentynine Palms
BREATHWORK WORKSHOP
9am
Amanda Fletcher – Activate the cognitive process, unlock emotional healing, and unleash a state of creative flow with certified breathwork practitioner Amanda Fletcher of Halo Holistic Wellness.
DOPAMINE BOOKS / PELAGIA MAGAZINE
10am
Go deep into the past, present and future with Bargain Witch author Brooke Palmeri, PELAGIA magazine readers, and tarot card master Mary Evans.
THE DESERT SPLIT OPEN REVIVAL
11am
Francene Kaplan, Susan Rukeyser, Jessica Leigh Studd, K. Andrew Turner, and Eleanor Whitney – Currently on hiatus, the queer, feminist literary series founded by Susan Rukeyser returns for a special presentation of readings celebrating intersectional voices of the Hi-Desert.
LIVE MUSIC
12pm
Patti Hood, John Talley-Jones and more unveil experimental compositions in the courtyard!
FEMINIST VOICES: AN ANTHOLOGY CELEBRATION
1pm
Martha Bayne, Madhushree Gosh, Gina Frangello, Monica Drake – Short readings by contributors to two new anthologies, Nothing Compares to You: What Sinead O’Connor Means to Us and The Big M: 13 Writers Take Back the Story of Menopause.
MFA READINGs
2pm
Short readings by faculty members and MFA candidates from the creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside, and University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.
WRITING SEX AND DESIRE
3pm
Ivy Pochoda, Natashia Deon, Laura Warrell, Rachel Resnick, Moderated by Gina Frangello– A panel discussion about the art of capturing the passions of carnal desire in words.
ABORTION PIÑATA: FOR PAULA
4pm
Jackie DesForges – Interactive Performance Art Installation – Artist’s Statement: The late artist, photographer, and director Agnès Varda, who once said: “I tried to be a joyful feminist, but I was very angry.” Joy and rage are the two emotions I associate with abortion — the rage of oppression, the joy of solidarity and the potential for full autonomy. And they are also the two emotions I associate with the piñata tradition — the joy of a colorful object, of celebration and community, and the violence of breaking it apart, the feeling of rage, no matter how small, that accompanies any act of destruction. Piñatas are most often found at children’s parties. I engage in the childlike behavior of beating a piñata and I wonder: Am I more human to you now? When you think of me as a child instead of a woman?
TIN TOWN CLOSING NIGHT PARTY
5pm
Join us for filmmaking and screenwriting programming along with live music…and stay for dinner and drinks at Kitchen in the Desert!
*In addition to the scheduled programming, join Matt Wall and Liz Lapp for an ongoing zine-making workshop inside Hi-Desert Times!
PARTICIPANTS
**This is only a sampling of the amazing talent we have coming out for the weekend, so check back in to see who else you’ll get to see!**
Carey Baker
Born on Chicago’s South Side, Cary Baker began his writing career at sixteen with an on-spec feature about Chicago street singer Blind Arvella Gray for the Chicago Reader. His return to writing follows a forty-two-year hiatus during which time he directed publicity for six record labels (including Capitol and IRS) and two of his own companies, working with acclaimed artists such as R.E.M., Bonnie Raitt, The Smithereens, James McMurtry, The Mavericks, Bobby Rush, Willie Nile, and more. Prior to his PR years, Baker wrote for the Chicago Reader, Creem, Trouser Press, Bomp!, Goldmine, Billbo
Bruce Craven
Bruce has an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He has undergraduate degrees in Politics and Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He works for Columbia Business School, running executive education programs and teaching to a global audience of business leaders. In 2025, he taught leadership and communication in New York, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. He also teaches the graduate business school course Leadership through Fiction to MBA students. The course draws on narratives in fiction, non-fiction, film, and poetry. In his early writing life, he published the novel Fast Sofa and co-wrote the screenplay for the film, starring Jennifer Tilly, Crispin Glover & Jake Busey. In the last six years, he has published the leadership book Win or Die: Leadership Secrets from Game of Thrones as well as the poetry collection, Buena Suerte in Red Glitter and a novel about NYC in the Nineties — Sweet Ride. He is currently working on an epic poem about a politically dysfunctional United States invaded by aliens — True America. His writing has been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, Turkish & Serbian. He lives with his wife, son and five rescued cats in Desert Hot Springs, California.
Natashia Deón
Natashia Deónis a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Nominee, practicing criminal attorney, judge for the LA Times Book Prize in Fiction, and former PEN America and Bread Loaf Fellow. Deón is the author of the critically acclaimed novels, GRACE and The Perishing, and is a professor of creative writing at UCLA and Antioch University. Her personal essays have been featured in The New York Times, Harper’s and The Los Angeles Times. Her new novel, BIRDS OF WAR, is due out February 2027.
Samantha Dunn
Samantha Dunn is the senior editor of premium content at the Southern California News Group, which publishes the Orange County Register. She produces the virtual program BOOKISH about authors, thinkers and the literary life with host Sandra Tsing Loh. But she is also the author of several books including the novel Failing Paris, a finalist for the PEN West Fiction Award, and a bestselling memoir, Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life. Sam’s work is anthologized in a number of places, including the short story anthology Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles, which she co-edited. Sam also teaches nonfiction at Chapman University and through the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers with Pam Houston.
Amanda Fletcher
Amanda Fletcher is a writer with a degree in kinesiology. Her Whole Human Workshops utilize three biohacking modalities: intentional writing, movement and active breathwork meditation.
Amanda’s writing has appeared in all of the Southern California News Group’s publications, among many others, and her forthcoming memoir recounts the time she broke her neck in a diving accident and the four months she spent in a cervical HALO. Her website is AmandaFletcher.me.
Melinda Lee Holm
Melinda Lee Holm is a writer and tarot scholar living in Los Angeles. She is the author of Your Tarot Guide, Tarot of Tales, Your Magickal Year, and Elemental Power Tarot, (all CICO Books/Ryland Peters & Small) as well as the co-author of Divine Your Dinner (Clarkson Potter). Her writing has appeared in Air/Light Magazine, Watkins Mind Body Spirit Magazine, SheKnows.com, HelloGiggles.com, and Stylist UK. Her sixth book, The Living Language of Tarot, will be released Spring 2027 on Red Wheel/Weiser Books. Melinda holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside Palm Desert Low-Residency program. She has been featured in Vogue, InStyle, WWD, Condé Nast Traveler, and The Hollywood Reporter.Jennifer Lewis is a writer, editor, and the publisher of Red Light Lit. Her debut short story collection, The New Low, was released in October 2022 by Nomadic Press, where her short story, “New Low,” was the winner of the Bindle Award in 2018. In 2020, she won the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction award for “Put a Teat in It.” She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in May 2015. She teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco.
Francene Kaplan
Bio TK
Jennifer Lewis
Jennifer Lewis is a writer, editor, and the publisher of Red Light Lit. Her debut short story collection, The New Low, was released in October 2022 by Nomadic Press, where her short story, “New Low,” was the winner of the Bindle Award in 2018. In 2020, she won the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction award for “Put a Teat in It.” She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in May 2015. She teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco.
David Martinez
David Martinez’ debut memoir, Bones Worth Breaking, was named one of the best books of 2024 by Esquire and was one of the featured books in Poets & Writers New Nonfiction 2024. He has lived all over the US, Puerto Rico, and Brazil and currently lives and teaches in Arizona.
Ruth Nolan
Ruth Nolan writes about life in the Mojave Desert. Her writing has been published in Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California Press; Campfire Books Volume II Stories Vol. 2: Voices from America’s National Parks and Trails; Joshua Tree: Where Two Deserts Meet and Los Angeles Fiction Anthology. Her essays have appeared in Boom California; McSweeney’s and KCET Los Angeles and her books include After the Dome Fire (poetry) and No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California’s Deserts (editor.) She is Professor of Creative Writing at College of the Desert and California Indian Nations College.
Instagram @ruthnolan
Davin M. Olsen
David M. Olsen (AKA Nik Xandir Wolf) is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and poet. He is a graduate of Stanford’s OWC program in novel writing and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside Palm Desert. He has published books of poetry, a novel, multiple anthologies, and various work in literary journals and magazines. He is at work on a crime novel series and a linked collection of short stories. He resides on California’s central coast where he surfs regularly, and helps keep the ocean clean by volunteering with Surfrider Foundation’s Monterey Chapter.
Patrick O'Neil
Patrick O’Neil is a former junkie bank robber and the author of the memoirs; Anarchy at the Circle K, and Gun, Needle, Spoon; and the co-author of The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison from PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program. In the early ’80s he was the roadie and/or road manager for Dead Kennedys, Flipper, T.S.O.L., and Subhumans. O’Neil has taught creative writing in numerous correctional facilities, universities, rehabs, and institutions of dubious renown.
Susan Rukeyser
Susan Rukeyser hosts the Desert Split Open in Joshua Tree, California. Her new novel, The Worst Kind of Girl, was published by Braddock Avenue Books.
Jessica Leigh Studd
Bio TK
Brian Townsley
Brian Townsley is an award-winning writer, as well as a podcaster and the Executive Editor at Starlite Pulp. He is the author of three collections of poetry, as well as the Sonny Haynes crime fiction books A Trunk Full of Zeroes and Outlaw Ballads. His short fiction has appeared in various publications, including Mystery Tribune, Quarterly West, Black Mask, Berkeley Poetry Review, Connecticut Review, Frontier Tales, and many others, and he had a story make the distinguished list in Best American Mystery Stories, 2019. He is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at USC and is also an alum of the mighty California Golden Bears. He lives in Southern California.
Info: Starlitepulp.com, and insta @starlite_pulp
K. Andrew Turner
Bio TK
Matt Wall
Eleanor Whitney
PLANNING COMMITTEE
Gina Frangello
Gina Frangello’s memoir Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and BookPage, and was included on “Best of 2021” lists at Lithub, BookPage, and elsewhere. Her sixth book, Elena Ferrante: The Neapolitan Quartet, was released on Ig Publishing’s “Bookmarked” series in 2024. Gina is also the author of four books of fiction, including A Life in Men, optioned by Charlize Theron’s production company Denver & Delilah; Every Kind of Wanting, included on “Best of 2016” lists at Chicago Magazine and The Chicago Review of Books; and My Sister’s Continent and Slut Lullabies, both now reissued by Northwestern University Press. Gina co-founded both Other Voices Books and the fiction section of The Nervous Breakdown; served as the Sunday editor for The Rumpus; was faculty editor for TriQuarterly Online and the Coachella Review and Creative Nonfiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books; and was an acquiring editor at Row House Publishing. She obtained her PhD from the U-IL Chicago, is on the low residency MFA faculty at the UNR-Tahoe, and has two LLCs, Circe Consulting and Craft School.
Rob Roberge
Roberge is the author of four books of fiction, most recently the novel The Cost of Living (OV Books, 2013), about which Cheryl Strayed wrote “is both drop-dead gorgeous and mind-bendingly smart.” He is core faculty at UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA in Writing Program, his short fiction and essays have been widely published and anthologized, and several of his plays have been produced in Los Angeles. A number of his books and screenplays have been optioned. Also a musician, he has released two solo albums and has played with the LA-based roots-rock bands The Violet Rays and The Danbury Shakes, and he plays guitar and sings with LA’s art-punk band The Urinals.
Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart is the CEO of the Library Foundation SD, supporting the San Diego Public Library system through advocacy, philanthropy, and outreach. He is the former Executive Director of regional literacy/literary arts organization Words Alive, former CEO of the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC, and prior Managing Director at San Diego Center for Jewish Culture. Patrick serves on the boards of ARTS: A Reason to Survive, Horton Plaza Theatres Foundation, and the United Way of San Diego County. He holds a BA Philosophy of Aesthetics & Literature and is a graduate of the Executive Non-Profit Management Program at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy. Patrick is a prolific partner with the region’s philanthropic, cultural, and non-profit communities, and an outspoken advocate for the importance of arts, culture, and the humanities.
Suzanne Van Atten
Suzanne Van Atten is a book columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, author of Moon Puerto Rico travel guide, and winner of the Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award for Best Travel Writing for her series on the Georgia Barrier Islands. Based in Los Angeles, Suzanne is a full-time freelance writer and editor published by Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Time Out, Kirkus, Los Angeles Magazine, and the LA Review of Books. Her seventh edition of Moon Puerto Rico publishes August 2026 and features tons of tried and true insider tips on how to enjoy the island like a local.
ADDITIONAL INFO
Event Venues
The Palms | Wonder Valley
Z Club | Joshua Tree
Mojave Gold | Yucca Valley
Corner 62 (brought to you by the Hi-Desert Times and Very Very) | Twentynine Palms
Tin Town | Twentynine Palms