Deanne Stillman brakes for sand. Her latest book is the critically acclaimed "Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West" (Houghton Mifflin), a Los Angeles Times "best book 08," and well-reviewed in the Atlantic Monthly, the Economist, NPR's On Point, Seattle Times, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Tucson Citizen, Albuquerque Journal, and elsewhere. She also wrote the bestseller "Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave," recently published in a new, updated edition by Angel City Press, with a foreword by T. Jefferson Parker and preface by Charles Bowden. It was originally a Los Angeles Times "best book 01," and Hunter Thompson called it "a strange and brilliant story by an important American writer." In addition, she is the author of "Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango" (University of Arizona Press), a celebration of Joshua Tree National Park with photographs by Galen Hunt. Her Rolling Stone piece, "The Great Mojave Manhunt," appears in "Best American Crime Writing 06" (Harper Perennial), and was a finalist for a PEN journalism award. She covered the Robert Blake case for Rolling Stone and the Phil Spector case for Spin and the UK Independent. Her work has appeared in the LA Times, Slate, the LA Weekly, the New York Times, Los Angeles Magazine, the Boston Globe, Orion, the Huffington Post, the New York Observer, Tin House, the Village Voice, and elsewhere, and in various anthologies. Her plays have won prizes in theatre festivals around the country. She is a core faculty member of the UC Riverside low-residency MFA creative writing program at Palm Desert.
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Jihad and cash offers meet American soldiers during the Gulf War, and beyond.
Two farmers win battle to protect Joshua Tree National Park from world's largest dump.
The Biblical year 5770 means new legislation for wild horses and burros must be passed immediately.
In which a cowboy named Tex saves my life at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
When it comes to the wild things, the Times generally gets it. But in this case something is deeply amiss.
With wild horses heading off the American stage, it's time to remember our equine veterans.
Spector tried to contain the mess, starting on the night it happened.
A one-act play about a middle-class homeless family living at a scenic overlook and waiting for a phone call from a polling organization. What happens when the head of the household isn't available?
Ten years ago this week, 34 wild horses were gunned down outside Reno. But they did not die in vain: it is now a felony to kill a wild horse on state lands in Nevada. And the lone survivor has a new family at a sanctuary in Carson City, Nevada.
We stripped the Indians of their ponies, and now we're doing it to ourselves.
Time to emancipate Billy, the last elephant at the LA Zoo.
On the passing of the big-hearted Tony Hillerman, my college writing instructor.
The play "Equus" is about a horse killing in the UK - the kind of thing that has been going on in the American West for decades.
You know it's fall when Yankee Stadium is gone.
It came from the Lifetime Channel: mom who wastes wildlife, attends PTA meetings, and loves Queen Esther becomes bizarre role model for American women.
George Bush compares the "angry left" with the North Vietnamese, but it's the angry right that made McCain cry uncle.
Prefiguring Trigger's imprint on Hollywood and Vine by eons, Miocene hoofprints are embedded on a Mojave wall.
Let us also remember our equine war veterans, and the four-leggeds who gave their all to re-enact our dreams.
"Small bookstores are doomed, unless the people who own and run them have deep pockets."
Peel off the layers of the "Love and Consequences" deception and there's an epic novel being written.
In which I learned at a 9/11 meeting that Bonny Bakley was fated to meet Christian Brando.
Lower-level treat of the year
"Holy cow! That thing is headed for Barstow!"
*Media ignores another kind of loss
(with updates, including animal casualty count for Griffith Park fire)
I don't know how I could have gotten through a certain part of my life without KNAC, the late, great...
While everyone is trying to figure out what happened in the jury room, the problem in the Spector case goes much deeper and involves the women who testified about Spector's violent past - and the men who didn't.
Here's a link to my Independent piece about the collision between Lana Clarkson and Phil Spector, as promised in my...
Six months after Lana Clarkson was found dead of a gunshot blast to the face in Phil Spector's Alhambra mansion,...
Will changes at the Los Angeles Times reverse a decades-long policy of not taking big LA stories seriously? Not likely.
August 5 marks the 44th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. As always, there is talk of how she died. Did...