Ruth Nolan

Ruth Nolan is a California desert-based writer, scholar and photographer who grew up in the Mojave Desert and now lives in the Coachella Valley, where she is professor of English, creative writing and American Indian and desert literature at College of the Desert. In addition to writing for KCET Artbound, she is the author of the poetry chapbook "Ruby Mountain" (Finishing Line Press 2016). Her prose writing and/or poetry has also been published in "The James Franco Review"; "Rattling Wall"; "Desert Oracle"; "Los Angeles"; "Lumen"; "Women’s Studies Quarterly"; "News from Native California"; "Sierra Club Desert Report"; "The Desert Sun"/"USA Today"; "New Writing California – Heyday Books," 2011; "Desert Magazine"; "Inlandia Literary Journeys" and in the Joshua Tree National Park-based short film, "Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps," produced by the California Museum of Photography. Her short story, “Palimpsest,” was published in "LA Fiction: Southland Writing" by Southland Writers (Red Hen Press 2016) and received an honorable mention in "Sequestrum Magazine’s" 2016 Editor’s Reprint contest.

Ruth is the editor of "No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California’s Deserts" (Heyday Books, 2009,) a featured author/scholar in the Santa Clara University “California Legacy Nature Dreaming Project,” and a member of the advisory committee for Poets and Writers West, California, as well as for Basin and Range Watch, a desert environmental advocacy nonprofit. She’s received writing/teaching grants and awards from Vermont Studio; Joshua Tree National Park; Shoshone Village Arts Council; the National Council of Teachers of English and the Inlandia Institute. She holds her M.F.A. in creative writing and writing for the performing arts from the Low Residency Program at the University of California, Riverside.