"Deanne Stillman takes us on a journey as full of desolation and grandeur as the desert itself." - @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social Spur Award. LA Press Club Award. Southwest Book of the Year. Raves Oregonian, Denver Post, Tucson Weekly. #greatgiftidea #booksky #truecrime #nonfiction #mojavedesert

"Looking across a desert panorama calms interior noise. The wide open space just shuts down the chatter. Then the impt stuff comes through. No static in the scenery. The eye can rest and therefore, the heart." - Psychology Today. See new trailer for Desert Reckoning. www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5_S...

High-voltage new trailer for Desert Reckoning, a modern western re a manhunt for a hermit who killed a cop in the Mojave. Fathers & sons, America's obsession with guns, who lives in the desert & why, finding grace in the carnage. Spur Award best nonfiction. #booksky www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5_S...

This is a new podcast production of my play "Who Walks the Sands," monologues about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and longing and desire. They are a mashup of the real and the imaginary. There's also an interview with me following the production. #theatresky redcircle.com/shows/626558...

The same people who lost their minds over renovations to Cracker Barrel are totally fine with the White House getting bulldozed

CONGRESS AS A FAMILY #TheShutdown

Here at No Kings Washington DC! #NoKings

New piece at @washingtonmonthly.com, about the Wounded Knee medals, Buffalo Bill's lost film about the massacre, Sitting Bull, and Pete Hegseth, with an excerpt from my book Blood Brothers. washingtonmonthly.com/2025/10/06/w...

NEW TIME: Taos, Metta Theatre, 10/19, 2pm: a reading of my play "Reflections in a D'Back's Eye," directed by Bruce McIntosh. About America and guns, via the incident in which Gabby Giffords was wounded and a little girl who wanted to play baseball was killed. Also: the Grand Canyon. #theatresky

Pete Hegseth just ended the medals review for soldiers involved in the Wounded Knee massacre. Yet even Buffalo Bill tried to make amends with Native Americans, making a film about the incident with Lakota re-enactors. It flopped and vanished from the record. I wrote about this in Blood Brothers.

For 9/11 24, my remembrance: Shortly before 9/11, something told me that I might never again see my mother who lived in NYC. I changed plans and headed there on 9/10, landing shortly before the attack. "It looks like Hiroshima down here," she soon said on the phone. www.truthdig.com/articles/911...

Taos, Metta Theatre, 8/17, 2pm: a reading of my play "Reflections in a D'Back's Eye," directed by Bruce McIntosh. About America's love affair w/guns, via the incident in which Gabby Giffords was wounded and a little girl who just wanted to play baseball was killed. With the Grand Canyon. #theatresky

In honor of MM on the anni of her death, here's the trailer for my film "Marilyn Monroe Flees Her Crypt When Hugh Hefner Is Buried Next Door," w/Shayne Eastin, directed Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, produced @butcherbirdprod.bsky.social, "best experimental short" Indie X Fest. vimeo.com/944552498?sh...

Yesterday, there were two mass shootings in the US: NYC and Reno. In this essay about the discovery of an old Winchester in Great Basin National Park and our affair with guns, I talk about another mass shooting near Reno - 34 wild horses at Christmas time in 1998. lareviewofbooks.org/article/winc...

Sometimes mail is fun! Just in from USPS: the 2025 @lapressclub.bsky.social Award for online political commentary, national, for my @washingtonmonthly.com piece, "Mothers, Sons, and Guns," published last year. It's my second LAPC award; the 1st was in 2013 for nonfiction, my book Desert Reckoning.

Donald Trump issued pardons to Joe Arpaio, Steve Bannon, six convicted war criminals, and over 1500 January 6th rioters, prompting serious questions about Biden's use of the autopen.

Star light, star bright. My latest piece, "Alligator Alcatraz: The New ICE Detention Center Is a Sin Against Nature," in which I talk about Big Cypress National Preserve as a Dark Sky Park, and how the new floodlights are obliterating #starlight. #astronomy washingtonmonthly.com/2025/07/15/a...

My latest piece, "Alligator Alcatraz: The ICE Detention Center Is a Sin Against Nature," in which I talk about Marjory Stoneman Douglas and her role in Big Cypress National Preserve, bringing attention to a place that had been written off. @therevelator.org washingtonmonthly.com/2025/07/15/a...

The great novelist Martin Cruz Smith has passed away. He and I were in convo yrs ago for Writers Bloc, re December 6, about Japan just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a characteristically gripping tale and we had an excellent convo. RIP Martin and thank you. www.amazon.com/December-Nov...

Whether it’s liberal tweaking their language to be more gender inclusive or Elon Musk tweaking Grok to say more positive things about Adolf Hitler, both sides have a free speech problem.

For July 4th, from Mustang.

New essay for #July4th on Journal of the Plague Years. "For as long as I can remember, I’ve had dreams that were prescient. Years ago, I dreamed that the states on a 3-D topological map of #America were flying off their bearings, one by one." journaloftheplagueyears.substack.com/p/i-dreamed-...

Jeffries: "When you look at that Declaration of Independence, the second part of it, it reads like an indictment against an out of control king ... they were fed up with Project 1775. So they implemented Project 1776."

When #CeciltheLion was killed ten years ago, I wrote an open letter to the guy who killed him, asking him to lay down his arms, citing wolf killers who couldn't take it any more and became wildlife advocates. With new anti-wolf policies underway, I ask again. lareviewofbooks.org/blog/essays/...

Congrats to the Doors on their 60th anni! Here's drummer John Densmore narrating a portion of Mustang, "The Horses Return." He's in Mustang too; with Michael Blake ("Dances with Wolves"), he purchased a billboard on Sunset Blvd saying "Stop the Roundups." rarebirdbooks.bandcamp.com/album/mustan...

For the 149th anni of the Battle of the Little Bighorn - today and tomorrow - I'm posting my piece "The Battle of the Little Bighorn and Our War Against What's Wild." It's about re-enactments and and how the battle connects with ongoing environmental assaults. www.truthdig.com/articles/the...

Just won the 2025 LA Press Club Award for political commentary, national, for my @washingtonmonthly.com piece, "Mothers, Sons, and Guns." This is my second LAPC Award; the first was for best nonfiction, my book Desert Reckoning in 2013. Many thx to @matthewcooper.bsky.social & the LAPC.

Who are the Marines in LA? They're from the 2/7, which served at Guadalcanal and Afghanistan. It was there that they became known as "the forgotten battalion," due to the high rate of suicide. Dispatch from ground zero - Twentynine Palms. @longreads.com journaloftheplagueyears.substack.com/p/marines

I spoke with retired Marine colonel Steve Fischer about Marines in LA. "Using any military force against Americans can only result in loss of respect and dignity that our military has earned in foreign conflicts to defend our Nation," he said. Read on: journaloftheplagueyears.substack.com/p/marines

Twentynine Palms: New piece about Marines in LA, Twentynine Palms, and walking the desert path. Plus earthquakes and Robert Plant. open.substack.com/pub/journalo...

Have ICE protests made Los Angeles too dangerous to live in? We asked three scowling retirees at a Shoney's in Branson.

The suspect in the Palm Springs bombing lived in #TwentyninePalms. Wrote about it 20 plus years ago. "History doesn't matter out here; it's space that counts, space that whispers make bombs and bring down the government all by yourself." @latimes.com "best book of year", rave from Hunter Thompson.

Part of my theatre doubleheader this week. "Mr. Fireman, Can You Help Me Get Home?" in the New Works Festival: The LA Chapters, "a must-see tribute to our home written, directed, and performed by Los Angeles residents." www.broadwayworld.com/los-angeles/...

Some news: My @washingtonmonthly.com piece, "Mothers, Sons, and Guns," about Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother, Jesse James and Zerelda, and Ma Barker and the Barker Gang, is a finalist for the @lapressclub.bsky.social Award in natl political commentary. Winners announced on 6/22. lapressclub.org

Coming soon: my play "On Such a Winter's Day". "The festival lineup features a wave of genre-bending work, including Deanne Stillman’s 'On Such a Winter’s Day,' offering a poetic tapestry of monologues from women navigating California’s dreamlike promise." www.presstelegram.com/2025/05/08/t...

"On May 16 and 17, Deanne Stillman returns to the stage with On Such a Winter's Day, a poignant mosaic that captures the fragile poetry of life in California. Directed by Dana Schwartz, the piece weaves the ordinary and the extraordinary with meditative grace." www.broadwayworld.com/los-angeles/...

Today is the 250th anni of #PaulRevere's ride. We all know the Longfellow poem and the steed who "kindled the land into flame." In Mustang I recount the rest of this little-known story. The horse's name was Brown Beauty. When the ride was over, she was captured by the British. #America had arrived.

Disgraceful. More evidence of Trump’s contempt for the military and higher education.

Excited to announce that my monologue, "Mr. Fireman, Can You Help Me Get Home?", will be part of The Morgan-Wixson New Works Festival: The LA Chapters, which is running from May 17th to May 25th. Tickets will be on sale very soon so stay tuned for more information. @morganwixson

Excited to announce that my monologue, "Mr. Fireman, Can You Help Me Get Home?", will be part of The Morgan-Wixson New Works Festival: The LA Chapters, which is running from May 17th to May 25th. Tickets will be on sale very soon so stay tuned for more information. @morganwixson

Anyone can say: let’s make Canada the 51st state. Real men say: let’s make America the 47th oblast.

Will Trump be popping a Tic Tac before invading #Greenland? "She's still very beautiful...I moved on her like a bitch." www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/u...

I may annex Canadian professor Andrew Hunt, who just wrote: "Besides Don DeLillo, others who have written outstanding books about Lee Harvey Oswald include Norman Mailer (Oswald’s Tale), Thomas Mallon (Mrs. Paine's Garage), and Deanne Stillman (American Confidential)." substack.com/home/post/p-...

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

Scientists have just cured pancreatic cancer in some patients with personalized mRNA vaccines. Pancreatic cancer. And this Trump administration wants to throw it all away. They’re throwing away a cure for cancer.

Last year, NC received $25 million from the US Dept. of Transportation to build underpasses on Highway 64 - an announcement that was widely celebrated. Vehicle collisions are a leading threat to critically endangered Red Wolves, + underpasses are seen as a potential solution.