SCHEDULE
For details on locations, please see our Map page.
THURSDAY / MARCH 30
5:00 PM Welcome Happy Hour | LEGION HALL
6:30 PM Sunset Break
8:00PM Transgressions: Alex Espinoza & Claire Vaye Watkins | LEGION HALL
9:00 PM Teddy Quinn (music) | LEGION HALL
FRIDAY / MARCH 31
9:30AM-5PM Environmental Lit Fest | ART BARN
9:30 Welcome and Intro
9:40 First Speaker - Dennis Dimick
10:10 Dennis Dimick Discussion
10:40 Second Speaker - Brenda Ann Kenneally
11:10 Brenda Ann Kenneally Discussion
11:45 Panel
2:00 Third Speaker - Kim Stringfellow
2:30 Kim Stringfellow Discussion
3:00 History of Vandalism: Rosa Lowinger
4:00 Charlie Bohem reading
5:00 A Few Recent Histories of Haunted (Desert) Debacles w/ Ruth Nolan, Felicitas Nunez, Claire Vaye Watkins
Writing inspired by growing up and coming of age in wild and woolly places in the Mojave and Coachella Valley deserts and going from there.....
1:00 PM Video Game Writing | THEATER
John Schimmel
Writing for video games comes with both unique challenges and opportunities. This talk will try to illuminate what those are.
2:00 PM Kelp Journal Reading | THEATER
Trey Burnette, Maria Duarte, Megan Eccles, Lindsay Jamieson, Kathryn McGee, David Olsen, Rob Roberge
A select reading from some of our finest magazine and anthology contributors past and present.
3:00 PM Beneath the Salton Sea | TEMPLE
Michael Paul Gonzalez
4:00 PM The Salton Sea Return to Eldorado Project | READING ROOM
Christopher Landis
Return to Eldorado is the newest chapter in a Forty-year work at the Salton Sea. The project includes Landis pictures from the eighties, new images from around the Sea, oral history, essays, maps and the most complete collection of historic images yet published.
5:00 PM Sex, Death & Pages | TEMPLE
Stacy Bierlein, Monica Drake, T. Greenwood
6:30 PM Sunset Break
8:00 PM Desert Stories: Tod Goldberg & Susan Straight | LEGION HALL
Stacy Bierlein emcee
Tod Goldberg and Susan Straight read from their desert-infused novels.
9:00 PM Hitchcock Brunettes (music) | LEGION HALL
SATURDAY / APRIL 1
Rachel Resnick
12:30 PM Tell It Slant Workshop | TEMPLE
Lindsay Jamieson
Fictionalizing the stories of your life.
1:30 PM The Desert Split Open | THEATER
Kelly Burns, Renee Gurley, Lalo Kikiriki (Jenifer Palmer-Lacy), Alex Maceda, Susan Rukeyser, Cindy Weinstein
Joshua Tree's Desert Split Open presents a Group Reading of "feminist, queer, or otherwise radical" work.
2:30 PM Kokopelli Spirit Journey | TEMPLE
AG Vasquez
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of 'Living on the Dime', the most significant community history of Inland Southern California that you have never heard of, I will be performing a new piece titled, 'Monster In My Backyard'. Part memoir, part narrative history, this story traces the roots of Kokopelli Spirit Journey and my quest to establish the California Coast Desert Trail.
3:00 PM Fireside Chat on Punk Rock | LIBRARY
4:00 PM Reading | THEATER
Meredith Maran, Rachel Resnick
Meredith reads from her work-long-in-progress, My Last Wild Fuck, to be published TBD by TBD.
4:30 PM Slowjamastan the Micronation & Mad Mike Hughes the Flat Earther Daredevil Rocketeer | TEMPLE
Justin Chapman
Journalist Justin Chapman, author of a book about his travels across Africa called Saturnalia: Traveling from Cape Town to Kampala in Search of an African Utopia, will read his Alta Journal articles about Slowjamastan, one of the world's newest micronations on the other side of the Salton Sea from Bombay Beach, and Mad Mike Hughes, the Flat Earther daredevil rocketeer whose fatal rocket launch/crash in February 2020 Justin filmed.
5:00 PM The Art of Writing Sex | THEATER
Alex Espinoza, Gina Frangello, Meredith Maran, Rachel Resnick, Laura Warrell
A moderated panel on the importance of sexually candid literature, how to approach writing sex and sexuality authentically and without self-censorship, and why less isn't always more.
6:30 PM Sunset Break
8:00 PM Trigger Warning: Not So Secret Sex Lives in Memoir and Fiction: Natashia Deon & Lacy Crawford | LEGION HALL
Lacy Crawford and Natashia Deón discuss the complexities of stories told through the lens of sexuality, consent and assault in memoir and in fiction.
9:00 PM Rich Ferguson (music), Thrill My Wife (music) | LEGION HALL
SUNDAY / APRIL 2
Amanda Fletcher
A mind, body spirit workshop combining movement, meditation and music for a substance-free trip that will blow your mind–come in comfortable clothes with something to lie down on.
11:00 AM Along the Chaparral | THEATER
Travis Hedge Coke, Nicole Furtado, Cj Jackson, Jasmine Elizabeth Smith
Why leftist, queer, and nonwhite editors wanted to edit anthologies of children's writings about the interred at military cemeteries, and how they did it.
12:00 PM Embody Your Story: A Somatic Storytelling Workshop for Authentic Expression, Healing, and Transformation | TEMPLE
Cooper Gillespie
Uncover the hidden stories that are craving to be expressed through you in this immersive and experiential workshop, where you will be guided through a unique process that combines somatic practices, creative writing exercises, and group sharing to explore the mystical realms of your ancestral lineage and the deep wisdom contained within your body.
1:00 PM Craig Clevenger & Patrick O’Neil Read | THEATER
Q&A to follow moderated by Rob Roberge
2:00 PM Whole Human Workshop (*BYO yoga mat!) | GARDEN
Amanda Fletcher
A mind, body spirit workshop combining movement, meditation and music for a substance-free trip that will blow your mind–come in comfortable clothes with something to lie down on.
3:00 PM UCR Group Reading | THEATER
Jackie DeForges, Maggie Downs, Hoda Mallone, Ruth Nolan
4:00 PM Centering Female Writers/Characters of Color | THEATER
Diane Brown, Ashley Coleman, Jasmin Iolani Hakes, Ana Reyes, Laura Warrell
5:00 PM Inaugural Mass of the Church of Potential Life | TEMPLE (performance art)
Jackie DesForges
In May 2022, when someone leaked the draft of the document that would eventually overturn Roe, I went to the copy store and printed out all 90 pages of it, then started cutting them up to make a giant erasure poem. It turned into a sort of manifesto for a new, imaginary religion that worships abortion and questions what we mean by “potential life.” In this art performance, I will officially launch the piece in a faux mass ceremony.
6:30 PM Sunset Break
8:00 PM Unconventional Female Protagonists: Sam Dunn & Ava Homa | LEGION
Hoda Malone emcee
9:00 PM Jimmy Camp solo acoustic (music), LANDROID (music) | LEGION