Ken Layne

Ken Layne is the creator of "Desert Oracle Radio" and the print quarterly "Desert Oracle." "The reason Desert Oracle works is that it's always trying to elicit that feeling, the awe and wonder that the desert reveals to you when you listen hard enough. Layne believes it's not an accident that religious awakenings, UFO sightings, walkabouts, and other revelations occur in the desert. It's a consequence of solitude, stark beauty, and the tenacious life that only the desert has." — Max Genecov, Pacific Standard "It’s 10 p.m. Friday night, and devoted listeners within range of KCDZ 107.7 FM in Joshua Tree tune in, while others from Echo Park to Boston stream the atmospheric show online. 'Night has fallen on the American desert,' host Ken Layne says in his deep, hypnotic drawl. He lulls listeners into the quietude of the desert, then rattles them with chilling tales of Bigfoot sightings, secret military UFO programs, missing hikers, and any number of myths and conspiracies involving an eclectic and eccentric cast of oddballs and experts who phone in from across the Southwest." — Steven Biller, Palm Springs Life Reviews of Ken Layne's 2011 novel "Dignity": "Layne's epistolary novel is not comparable to its classic predecessors like 'Frankenstein' or 'Dracula' but far more similar to the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Like Paul the Apostle's writings to the early churches after his conversion, the author of these letters, the mysterious 'N,' spreads similar messages. The difference, of course, is in the theology, which is more akin to the writings and views of John Muir and Edward Abbey." — The Rumpus "But to understand the social mood as embodied by a group like Occupy, it may help to look at literature that captures its zeitgeist. One of the books that seems to have become a standard bearer for the Occupy movement is Ken Layne's 'Dignity.' In a book that can only be described as a series of modern-day letters on the gospel of communal simplicity, you can see what kind of world some of the Occupiers might envision: communities occupying vacant suburban or exurban subdivisions, farming the land themselves, bartering with doctors and the like, and shunning modern technology." — Minyanville.com "In style, 'Dignity' is an epistolary novel, as if it were Paul writing the Galatians. In theme, Layne takes on our separation from the land via our vampiric computer screens, and commands us back to nature. In focus are many of Layne's longtime obsessions: the housing market, the vulgarities of both rich and poor, the built environment .... A book that starts out cynical and frightening ends with hope." — FourStory.org Ken Layne, known for his "acerbic wit and devastating missives on the state of contemporary America," has been a writer and editor at Gawker, Wonkette, LA Examiner, and many newspapers and magazines. His prescient 2011 novel "Dignity" is a gripping denunciation of online media and the "void of the screen" that foresaw Occupy Wall Street, the sinister use of social media in national elections, and the institutional lawlessness that rises up in moral vacuums. He lives and works in the Mojave Desert Wilderness.