Ruth Nolan

Ruth Nolan, a former wildland firefighter, is a Southern California-based writer, with strong roots in the Mojave Desert and Coachella Valley. Her poetry has been published in Rattling Wall; Women’s Studies Quarterly; Pacific Review; Poemeleon; New California Writing/Heyday Books; and is included in the Joshua Tree National Park film “Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps,” produced by the California Museum of Photography. She writes essays focusing on California desert culture and the arts for award-winning KCET Los Angeles; News from Native California, Sierra Club Desert Report, and Inlandia Literary Journeys. Her short story “Palimpsest,” was published in Short Fiction Los Angeles: Southland Writing by Southland Writers (Red Hen Press 2016) and received an Honorable Mention in Sequestrum Magazine’s Editor’s Reprint Award, 2016. Her writing has also been published in Lumen, Desert Oracle and The Desert Sun/USA Today. She is editor of No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California’s Deserts(Heyday Books, 2009) and serves on the advisory board for Poets and Writers, California/West; has participated in the Santa Clara University-California Legacy Project; co-founded the Inlandia Institute Writing Workshop program; and has been interviewed on the Blackstone Audio radio show “Get Behind Me, Now Stay there.” Ruth is professor of English at College at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, CA, and lectures widely on desert and Native American literary topics. She holds her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert. She is the mother of one daughter, grandmother to two baby boys, and lives in Palm Springs, CA with her two big desert dogs.