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Barret Baumgart

@barretbaumgart

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Author of the new book YUCK 🏜️ and China Lake "An apocalypse of the weird" ¶ Los Angeles ¶ Weird Nonfiction ¶ Dumpster Fires

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Join us Saturday November 21, 2026 as we welcome writer Barret Baumgart!
🔸11:00am (Doors open at 10:30am)
🔸 Seating is limited. If you would like to attend please email us at rap-Campodecahuenga@lacity.org or get a free ticket on Eventbrite. The link for Eventbrite will be in our stories (and later in Speaker Highlights). 🌿

In this illuminating talk, author Barret Baumgart shares the unlikely origin story of his book YUCK: The Birth & Death of the Weird & Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca brevifolia—a project born from a canceled COVID-19 wedding that spiraled from a simple favor into a deep dive into Southern California’s forgotten past. Baumgart offers an encouraging roadmap for uncovering extraordinary history in everyday life, showing how a brief spark of curiosity revealed a bizarre saga of 19th-century hostility toward the Joshua tree, which was once systematically chopped down to fuel Los Angeles’s promotional boom.

Connecting this history directly to the San Fernando Valley, Baumgart traces how early promotional efforts—spearheaded by writers like Charles Nordhoff, namesake of the Valley’s own Nordhoff Street—helped drive the settlement of SoCal while consuming its desert landscape. Following a short reading from YUCK, he will demonstrate how one forgotten narrative leads directly to the next, ending where Nordhoff Street meets the Santa Susana Field Laboratory—the site of his upcoming book. In the tradition of Mike Davis and Joan Didion, this talk explores the intersections of colonialism, regional mythmaking, and the hidden stories waiting to be unearthed in our own backyards.

🔸If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation to participate in a City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks program, service, or activity, requests may be made by calling the facility (818-301-6160) or 711 for CA Relay, ten days in advance of the event. We will do our best to fulfill requests with less than ten business days’ notice.

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April 13, 2026 7:00 pm PT. WORDS TO THE WILD. April is California Native Plant Month AND National Poetry Month. Join us to read and discuss poems that celebrate the beauty and importance of native plants! Poets Lucille Lang Day, Barret Baumgart, and Veronica Kornberg, and Director of Theodore Payne Foundation, Amy Greenwood. One-hour zoom with optional open mic to follow. This will be fun! Free, but please register to attend: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/XarR2LxTSFmUdNY5fLJsYw

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Writing and editorial work over the last handful of months, in no particular order, plus photo dump

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Grateful to the editors of the journals that offered a home to my poetry / nonfiction / interviews / curation @revel_literary @loverseyepress @mutha_magazine @westbranchmag & the writers who let me collaborate with them @careylinnae @heidiseaborn @lynn_melnick @barretbaumgart @abugoddess

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“Morphology of the Folktale” - Revel

“Sunday Scaries” - Lover’s Eye

“How Fierce Intensities Can Linger Within Us: An Interview with Carey Salerno” - Mutha

“The Small Moments that Construct a Life: An Interview with Heidi Seaborn” - Mutha

“Maybe Just a Little of That Light Will Reflect on Us”:
Writing Los Angeles curation featuring Lynn Melnick, Barret Baumgart, and Jessica Abughattas - West Branch

#writing #poetry #essay #interview #LA A bowl with fake food plus a monster finger puppet

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Currently reading. Quite extraordinary.

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Thanks for the book signing and 🔥T-shirt @barretbaumgart

Can't wait to read Yuck under my local Joshua Trees!

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Part 2 of our holiday gift guide to help you gift more soul this Christmas 📚💚👽

Here are 3 powerful reads by earth-loving artists we love:

Barret Baumgartner — Yuck @barretbaumgart

Wolf Kinsman — Zen @wolfkinsmen

Anna Zemann — Coming Home @annaearthgirl

Check them out, share ideas, and gift soul this Christmas.

Got more recs? Leave them in the comments 👇💚👽

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Alright, so this may SOUND early—but it’s not! The 29 Palms Book Fest takes place in about a month. 😵

We’ll be running it back with Patrick and Francoise and the rest of the good folks at Desert General on November 7-9 out in the desert. We’ll have a ton of books and merch, we’ll be doing some panels, AND we’ll be hosting the 2nd Noir in the Boneyard reading! That’ll be on Saturday, November 8th at the 29 Palms Cemetery. The lineup for that will be released later this week, and tickets will be up on Eventbrite soon as well. And we’re working on the new Boneyard poster as well!

Anyways, save the date(s) and come on out! 🤙🏼

#29palms
#twentyninepalms
#29palmsbookfestival
#starlitepulp
#noirintheboneyard
#bookfest
#authorevent
#reading

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I’m so grateful to the editors of @westbranchmag for inviting me to guest edit a nonfiction feature for West Branch Wired and saying yes to the idea of soliciting essays about LA after the Eaton and Palisades fires. These essays by @lynn_melnick, @barretbaumgart, and @abugoddess are amazing. I feel so lucky these writers agreed to share work with me for the feature.

Taken together, these essays tell a story about the city, but also the art of nonfiction. I love the way voice, place, and memory emerge across these works.

Thank you, Lynn Melnick, Barret Baumgart, and Jessica Abughattas.

Feature link here (West Branch site):

westbranch.blogs.bucknell.edu
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#nonfiction #losangeles #la #altadena #losangelesfires #cityofangels #nonfiction #nonfictionreads #litmag #westbranch #guesteditor @bucknellu @shara.lessley

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Happy Wednesday, our digital issue 109 is now live on the website! Go check out some stunning new work by our lovely contributors!

#poetry #fiction #nonfiction #literarymagazine #digitalmagazine #litmag #launchday #issuelaunch #poets #writers #writingcommunity

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It was a bountiful summer of reading…dropping in some capsule reviews (longer form on substack)

THE WAY AROUND - A book about walking?! SIGN ME UP. @nicholas.triolo’s book centers on a practice called kora, a form of moving prayer, or circumambulation, which takes shape through walking in circles. He traces these orbits around mountains in Tibet, California, and Montana. Triolo is a curiosity powerhouse, a master of prose, and my favorite kind of explorer - one immersed in contemplative thought. I loved every page.

CALIFORNIA AGAINST THE SEA - LA Times reporter (and fellow HeyDay author!) @rosanna.xia’s book about California’s vanishing coastline was surprisingly full of hope (and won the PEN/E.O. Wilson award). She writes with compassion and urgency about what sea-level rise means for communities. Her storytelling is deeply reported and unflinchingly honest - equal parts warning and invitation.

IS A RIVER ALIVE? - @robgmacfarlane’s new book follows three immersive excursions along rivers in Ecuador, India, and Quebec — and, with equal power though less space, in his home spring waters in England. He swims, walks, and paddles with companions fluent in mycology and ecology, steeped in the sciences of water, and attuned, like naturalists and seers, to more elusive ways of knowing. The book circles around the question in its title — are rivers alive? — and introduces the “rights of nature” movement. The prose and ideas in this book are simply stunning.

YUCK - Having spent the past half decade chasing remote Joshua tree groves across BLM lands, I was thrilled to discover that essayist @barretbaumgart had written an entire book about them. Yuck is a wacky ride through the trials, tribulations, and perilous future of the ancient Yucca brevifolia. The book reveals the tree’s unlikely rise from desert oddity to cultural icon and its improbable survival despite centuries of scorn — all while making me laugh enough to feel like I was on an apocalyptic joyride down an avenue called Probable Extinction.

Running out of space, but if you’re into books about walking and photography (and Japan), you will love @craigmod’s insightful essays in Things Become Other Things.

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So smart, yet so dumb? Definitely something we felt during our chat with @barretbaumgart...

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this! Full chat is live on the Aliens Love Earth YouTube, link in the bio 📺

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#humanity #climatechange #sustainability #writersofinstagram #humanspecies

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What do you think? Can we do better than this? 💚

Find the full interview on the Aliens love Earth YouTube, you know where the link is 📺

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#ClimateChange #ArtForEarth #SaveThePlanet #EcosystemRestoration #WritersOfInstagram

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