User:WWB Too/Ken Layne/Sources quoted

Ken Layne
Born57–58[1]
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Writer, publisher, broadcaster
Known forWonkette, Desert Oracle
Notable workDignity

Ken Layne is an American writer, publisher and broadcaster best known for his political blogging in the early 2000s and his association with Gawker Media and Wonkette from 2006 to 2012. He is the proprietor of Desert Oracle, a self-published periodical and radio program exploring themes related to the Mojave desert and the Southwestern United States.

Career

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Early career

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After graduating from a San Diego, California magnet high school focused on broadcast journalism,[2] Layne began his career in the mid-1980s reporting for Southern California newspapers[3] before moving to Europe, where he worked for television, radio, and print journalism outlets in Macedonia,[4] the Czech Republic, and Hungary.[5] In the late 1990s, Layne returned to the United States[6] and turned to online journalism exclusively.[7]

In April 1997, Layne co-founded Tabloid.net,[8] an online publication in the "brassy style of tabloid newspapers", with $50,000 in savings.[9] While unprofitable as a company,[10] Tabloid.net attained notoriety as an "unabashed scandal-monger"[11] and for suing a Florida advertising company for appropriating its intellectual property, "a talking ham sandwich that gives advice".[12]

Layne's next venture was LAExaminer.com, co-founded in 2001 with future Reason editor-in-chief Matt Welch, focused in part on criticism of Los Angeles' last remaining daily newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. The "Examiner" name was intended as homage to the defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner. In early 2003, former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan announced his intentions to publish a full-color, 52-page, tabloid-format print edition called Los Angeles Examiner, with Layne as editor, intended to improve on the Times' local reporting.[13] A prototype was produced and circulated among potential investors and advertisers,[14] however the project was shelved after Riordan delayed its launch in May 2003.[15]

During this time period, Layne also received attention for blogging at his personal website, KenLayne.com,[16][17] and became known in the early 2000s American political and technology blogosphere for a quote directed at the mainstream media: "We can fact-check your ass".[18][19][20] Another Layne project of the era was called Highways West, a travel website about the Western United States, announced in January 2005.[21][22]

Gawker Media and Wonkette

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In April 2005, Layne joined with former Gawker editor Choire Sicha to launch Sploid, a Drudge Report-inspired,[23] "tabloid-emulating" website for Gawker Media,[24] devoted to breaking news.[25] He later became "national correspondent" for the flagship Gawker website.[26]

Layne became the West Coast writer for Gawker Media's "absurdist" and "vicious"[27] political humor site Wonkette in 2006, and later its managing editor.[28] Gawker owner Nick Denton spun off Wonkette in 2008, along with two other websites, and Layne became Wonkette's owner.[29]

In 2009, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named Layne and Wonkette in his "Worst Person in the World" segment[30] for allegedly mischaracterizing a temporary absence from his television program.[31][32] In 2011, Wonkette faced media criticism and desertion by advertisers after a writer mocked Trig Palin, the child of 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who has Down syndrome. Layne deleted the post after several advertisers, including Papa John's Pizza, pulled their advertising from the site.[33][34]

Layne sold Wonkette to Los Angeles journalist Rebecca Schoenkopf in 2012.[35] Of his career writing for the Gawker Media sites, Layne said in 2018: "All of that I did from the desert, and no one knew".[36]

Desert Oracle

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In February 2015, Layne created Desert Oracle: The Voice of the Desert,[37] a quarterly periodical focused on the the "weirdness of the desert" in the Southwestern United States.[38] Each edition runs 44 pages, most of which is written and designed by Layne,[39] entirely in black-and-white, inside a yellow and black cover.[40] Typical content includes "adventurers' journal entries, railroad ad copy, and ... naturalists' musings", as well as stories on "alien sightings" and other paranormal phenomena.[41] Inspiration for Desert Oracle came from Randall Henderson's Desert Magazine[42] and Harry Oliver's Desert Rat Scrap Book.[43]

Published from Joshua Tree, California, Layne distributes the publications to bookstores and cafes across the desert southwest.[44] As of 2018, Desert Oracle is available in five states and reaches the majority of its readership[45] through the mail via paid subscription.[46]

Desert Oracle became the basis of a weekly half-hour radio show, The Desert Oracle Radio, hosted by Layne for the community radio station KCDZ in June 2017.[47] With subject matter similar to the print version, Layne's radio show features "chilling tales of Bigfoot sightings, secret military UFO programs, missing hikers, and any number of myths and conspiracies" centered in the Mojave desert and the American Southwest.[48] The Desert Oracle Radio reaches Joshua Tree National Park and nearby towns including Pioneertown, Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley by terrestrial broadcast;[49] the show is also available as a podcast.[50]

Other writing

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Layne is the author of two novels, Dot.con, published in 2001,[51][52] and Dignity, an epistolary novel about a group of Los Angelenos creating a new community within abandoned desert housing developments following an economic collapse, in 2011.[53][54]

He formerly was a columnist for USC Annenberg School's Online Journalism Review[55], and wrote a column called "Desert Rattler" for LA CityBeat, both now defunct.[56] Other writing by Layne has appeared in the The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Awl.[57]

Personal life

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Layne was born in Louisiana,[58] where he lived in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans as a child.[59] He moved to the Phoenix, Arizona suburbs[60] for middle school, and later to San Diego, where he first began visiting the Mojave desert.[61]

Layne records his own music,[62] and formerly played with Southern California rock musicians Country Dick Montana and Buddy Blue Seigal.[63]

He has cited Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey as an influence,[64] whom he met and corresponded with before Abbey's death in 1989.[65]

Further reading

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References

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  1. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne, 51, was born in Louisiana
  2. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne attended middle school in Arizona, where "my parents clawed their way into the middle class," and then a magnet high school with a broadcast journalism program in San Diego.
  3. ^ Netburn, Deborah (29 May 2015). "After leaving the political blogging fray, he now covers desert's quiet weirdness". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. He started his career as a reporter writing for small newspapers in and around Southern California in the mid-'80s
  4. ^ Genecov, Max (5 March 2018). "How Ken Layne Created a Publishing Oasis in a Desert Town of 8,000 People". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne became involved in all sorts of media, starting in local Southern California news before bouncing around Europe working in radio, television, and newspapers. … he once worked in radio in Macedonia
  5. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. "After the Berlin Wall fell I worked for the first English-language paper in Prague," he says of his journeyman days, which also included writing about country music in Macedonia and technology in Budapest."
  6. ^ Swartz, Jon (22 February 1999). "The Stars of Technology Sweeps Month". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 25 April 2018. The suit, filed February 8 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleges that the leftover sandwich -- featured in a Tabloid.net news series -- reappeared in the orange juice ads. ... Ken Layne, Tabloid.net co-founder and editor.
  7. ^ Netburn, Deborah (29 May 2015). "After leaving the political blogging fray, he now covers desert's quiet weirdness". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. by the late '90s he had made the transition to writing for the Internet full time
  8. ^ Yung, Katherine (15 February 1999). "Web firm sues local ad agency; Dispute centers on talking ham sandwich". Dallas Morning News. Tabloid.net, which was started in April 1997 … Ken Layne, a co-founder of Tabloid.net {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  9. ^ Abate, Tom (18 March 1998). "New Bill on Tech Workers Is More Like a Legislative Gun". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Last spring, Ken Layne and Charlie Hornberger of San Francisco launched a Web site that married the brassy style of tabloid newspapers to the global reach of the Internet … funded by sweat equity and $50,000 in savings
  10. ^ Yung, Katherine (15 February 1999). "Web firm sues local ad agency; Dispute centers on talking ham sandwich". Dallas Morning News. Like many Internet companies, Tabloid is not profitable, said Ken Layne, a co-founder of Tabloid.net {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  11. ^ Abate, Tom (18 March 1998). "New Bill on Tech Workers Is More Like a Legislative Gun". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 25 April 2018. When all the news that's fit to print is about Oval Office groping, what's left for the unabashed scandal-monger?
  12. ^ Swartz, Jon (22 February 1999). "The Stars of Technology Sweeps Month". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Flabbergasted Tabloid.net officials say an animated talking ham sandwich logo that first appeared on their news site in 1997 was pilfered and reused in a $20 million marketing campaign for the Florida Department of Citrus last fall. The suit, filed February 8 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleges that the leftover sandwich...
  13. ^ "The Big Dick". The Economist. 6 February 2003. Retrieved 25 April 2018. The editors ... have put together a colourful 52-page tabloid full of articles by an array of seasoned LA journalists ... The aim, says Mr Layne, is to reflect the cultural energy of the city and, naturally, to cover local stories better than the existing media does. … Layne and Welch … started a website in 2001 devoted to daily criticism of the paper. They called it LAExaminer.com in memory of an earlier competitor, the LA Herald Examiner.
  14. ^ Wood, Daniel B. (30 January 2003). "In L.A., a new tabloid from its ex-mayor". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Holding a copy of their 52-page prototype - which editors hope to circulate to prospective advertisers and investors for a June 5 launch - managing editor Ken Layne explains...
  15. ^ Rutten, Tim (3 May 2003). "Riordan delays tabloid". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Riordan has delayed the L.A. Examiner's launch
  16. ^ Gallagher, David (10 June 2002). "A Rift Among Bloggers". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. there are war bloggers who feel little need to pay homage to the tech crew. Ken Layne, a journalist in Los Angeles who publishes a blog at KenLayne.com, argues that he, Matt Drudge and others were writing about current events on the Web long before the term Weblog had been coined
  17. ^ Seipp, Catherine (June 2002). "Online Uprising". American Journalism Review. John Montorio, the Los Angeles Times' deputy managing editor for features, seems comparatively blog-savvy. He sometimes reads LAExaminer.com, a site that links and comments on L.A. media, and occasionally checks the blogs of LAExaminer's founders, Ken Layne (kenlayne.com) and Matt Welch (mattwelch.com/warblog.html) {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  18. ^ Beato, Greg (20 September 2012). "Welcome to the Golden Age of Fact-Checking". Reason.com. Retrieved 25 April 2018. In December 2001, when Ken Layne famously declared, "It's 2001, and we can Fact Check your ass,"
  19. ^ Craig Silverman (2007). Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press. Union Square Press. p. xxvi. ISBN 978-1402751530. Retrieved 25 April 2018. As Ken Layne, an early blogger, warned mainstream media in 2001: "We can fact-check your ass."
  20. ^ Scott Rosenberg (2009). Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters. Crown Books. pp. 151–152. ISBN 978-0307451361. Retrieved 26 April 2018. The conflict between bloggers and professional journalists had been boiled down to a single phrase by Ken Layne, a maverick Web journalist, in 2001.
  21. ^ Roderick, Kevin (15 January 2005). "Layne's new gig". LA Observed. Retrieved 25 April 2018. The co-founder of the old L.A. Examiner blog is now the Editor and Publisher (and writer and ad guy) for a pretty new website called Highways West.
  22. ^ Swann, Jennifer (15 November 2017). "A Zine That Leans Into the Mojave Desert's Weirdness Is Now a Spooky Podcast". LA Weekly. Retrieved 25 April 2018. ...later launching a travel website called Highways West.
  23. ^ Wallace-Wells, David (8 April 2005). "In Praise of Sploid". Slate. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Steered jointly by former Gawker editor Choire Sicha, Ken Layne of Tabloid.net, and one-time Wonkette underling Henry Seltzer, the Drudgelike zine...
  24. ^ Roderick, Kevin (29 May 2015). "Ex-blogger Ken Layne has a desert magazine". LA Observed. Retrieved 25 April 2018. He teamed up with Gawker in 2005 on a tabloid-emulating site called Sploid...
  25. ^ Wallace-Wells, David (8 April 2005). "In Praise of Sploid". Slate. Retrieved 25 April 2018. [Sploid] promises to put the "top stories up top, played big, as fast as they break…"
  26. ^ Levy, Nicole (17 February 2015). "Ken Layne, Desert Oracle". Politico. Retrieved 25 April 2018. [Layne] made his career as … a national correspondent at Gawker...
  27. ^ Netburn, Deborah (29 May 2015). "After leaving the political blogging fray, he now covers desert's quiet weirdness". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. For six years he ran the absurdist -- and vicious -- political blog Wonkette.
  28. ^ Roderick, Kevin (29 May 2015). "Ex-blogger Ken Layne has a desert magazine". LA Observed. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne became the politics site's West Coast person in 2006 and later the managing editor…
  29. ^ Fung, Amanda (14 April 2008). "No joke: Gawker selling three blogs". Crain's New York Business. Retrieved 25 April 2018. In addition to provocative political blog Wonkette, Manhattan-based Gawker is selling music site Idolator.com and urban travel site Gridskipper.com. … Wonkette is being spun off to its managing editor, Ken Layne.
  30. ^ Netburn, Deborah (29 May 2015). "After leaving the political blogging fray, he now covers desert's quiet weirdness". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Keith Olbermann called him the worst person in the world
  31. ^ "'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Wednesday, May 13, 2009". Countdown with Keith Olbermann. 13 May 2009. MSNBC. The website has since called me a liar because I went to baseball games after my mother died. The first site to link off this and swallow it whole was sadly Wonkette. Advised of its mistake, its editor Ken Layne, who apparently doesn't understand that laughing all the time about everything is not wit, but more likely a serious medical condition, wrote... {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |serieslink= ignored (|series-link= suggested) (help)
  32. ^ Sherman, Gabriel (14 May 2009). "Keith Olbermann's Ego Trumps the Truth". Gawker. Retrieved 26 April 2018. Oh man, Keith Olbermann took to his nightly airwaves to try and shame CityFile, Wonkette and us for raising questions about his unexplained vacation last April. We're not sorry.
  33. ^ Byers, Dylan (21 April 2011). "Wonkette Deletes Controversial Trig Palin Post". AdWeek. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Wonkette, the gossipy political blog, has deleted a post mocking Sarah Palin's son Trig, who has Down syndrome, after many of its advertisers announced that they would withdraw their advertisements from the site. … Papa John's, Huggies, and at least seven other companies had announced that they would withdraw their ads from Wonkette.
  34. ^ Dickson, Caitlin (20 April 2011). "Derek Hunter Attempts to Defund Wonkette by Boycott". Atlantic Wire. Retrieved 26 April 2018. Today Wonkette removed the post from the site, citing the requests of "some people who have nothing to do with Sarah Palin, but who do have an interest in the cause of special needs children. We apologize for the poor comedic judgement."
  35. ^ Roderick, Kevin (29 May 2015). "Ex-blogger Ken Layne has a desert magazine". LA Observed. Retrieved 25 April 2018. In 2012 Wonkette was bought by LA journalist Rebecca Schoenkopf...
  36. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. For almost 18 years he ran and wrote for the click-bait websites Wonkette, Gawker, Tabloid.net, and Sploid. "All of that I did from the desert, and no one knew,"...
  37. ^ Levy, Nicole (17 February 2015). "Ken Layne, Desert Oracle". Politico. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Disenchanted with the medium that made his career as editor … Layne is now mapping a frontier he hadn't explored before: print. Enter the Desert Oracle: The Voice of the Desert
  38. ^ Netburn, Deborah (29 May 2015). "After leaving the political blogging fray, he now covers desert's quiet weirdness". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. It would be a quarterly regional magazine about the Southwest [and] would pay homage to the weirdness of the desert with stories about strange desert animals and even stranger desert characters.
  39. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne writes and designs most of the 44-page publication.
  40. ^ Genecov, Max (5 March 2018). "How Ken Layne Created a Publishing Oasis in a Desert Town of 8,000 People". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 25 April 2018. ...40 pages or so, yellow and black cover, and monochromatic words and pictures.
  41. ^ Genecov, Max (5 March 2018). "How Ken Layne Created a Publishing Oasis in a Desert Town of 8,000 People". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 25 April 2018. The magazine runs a mix of old stories—long-dead adventurers' journal entries, railroad ad copy, and (also long-dead) naturalists' musings—and new ones—on everything from botanical oddities and desert cryptids to alien sightings and the Yucca Man (the desert equivalent of Bigfoot).
  42. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Desert Oracle takes inspiration from magazines and guides of the past, including Randall Henderson's Desert Magazine...
  43. ^ Levy, Nicole (17 February 2015). "Ken Layne, Desert Oracle". Politico. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne's magazine channels the aesthetic of ... Hollywood art director Harry Oliver's 'zine from the mid-20th century, The Desert Rat Scrap Book.
  44. ^ Swann, Jennifer (15 November 2017). "A Zine That Leans Into the Mojave Desert's Weirdness Is Now a Spooky Podcast". LA Weekly. Retrieved 25 April 2018. The small print quarterly … was initially distributed only to cafes and bookstores within a short drive of Layne's home in Joshua Tree...
  45. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. As the only employee, he also stuffs 2,800 copies into envelopes for subscribers and delivers another 2,000 copies to "cool and interesting" outposts in five states...
  46. ^ Swann, Jennifer (15 November 2017). "A Zine That Leans Into the Mojave Desert's Weirdness Is Now a Spooky Podcast". LA Weekly. Retrieved 25 April 2018. [R]eaders with Oakland, Brooklyn and Silver Lake ZIP codes comprise a considerable chunk of its roughly 2,600 mail-order subscribers...
  47. ^ Swann, Jennifer (15 November 2017). "A Zine That Leans Into the Mojave Desert's Weirdness Is Now a Spooky Podcast". LA Weekly. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Broadcast for the first time this past June [2017] out of the community radio station Z107.7 FM, The Desert Oracle Radio...
  48. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. "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.
  49. ^ Dailey, Keli (25 March 2018). "'Desert Oracle' sheds light on histories, mysteries of Mojave's allure". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 25 April 2018. His show is broadcast Friday nights at 10 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM, a station beamed across Joshua Tree National Park and the neighboring communities of Joshua Tree, Pioneertown, TwentyNine Palms and Yucca Valley.
  50. ^ Genecov, Max (5 March 2018). "How Ken Layne Created a Publishing Oasis in a Desert Town of 8,000 People". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 25 April 2018. The show reaches most of its audience as a podcast, though, a concession that Layne is willing to make for the sake of visibility.
  51. ^ "Dot.con / Ken Layne". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Dot.con / Ken Layne … Duffy & Snellgrove, 2001
  52. ^ Koval, Ramona (28 July 2001). "Blokes Rule, Okay?". ABC Radio National. Retrieved 25 April 2018. American writer and journalist, Ken Layne discusses his book on the collapse of the dot com revolution, Dot Con...
  53. ^ Cage, Caleb (28 July 2011). "Populist Fatalism". The Rumpus. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Within the turmoil and chaos of these revolutionary times, a small group in Los Angeles decides to go off-grid and try their hand at providing for themselves, eventually leaving the cities for the unpaved cul-de-sacs and unfinished houses abandoned by builders and financiers throughout the once-rapidly growing region. Layne makes these futuristic communities extraordinarily believable in several ways. … Layne's epistolary novel...
  54. ^ Clarke, Chris (3 August 2011). "Ken Layne's Modest Utopia". KCET. Retrieved 25 April 2018. In Ken Layne's new novel Dignity, those scarred landscapes -- the abandoned gated housing developments, the forlorn desert strip malls -- become a creche for a new society struggling to survive the demise of the old, as refugees from the failing American economic system try to remake their lives in what had been vacant real estate.
  55. ^ Barringer, Felicity (3 September 2001). "An Accusation of Online Plagiarism". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Ken Layne, a columnist with The Online Journalism Review, at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication...
  56. ^ Swann, Jennifer (15 November 2017). "A Zine That Leans Into the Mojave Desert's Weirdness Is Now a Spooky Podcast". LA Weekly. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Eventually, Layne leaned into the weirdness of his surroundings, writing a column called "Desert Rattler" for the now defunct alt-weekly L.A. CityBeat , and later launching a travel website called Highways West.
  57. ^ Painter, Alysia Gray (5 March 2016). "Desert Oracle: Love for Arid Expanses". NBC Los Angeles. Retrieved 25 April 2018. "[H]is work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Awl, The New York Times...
  58. ^ Netburn, Deborah (29 May 2015). "After leaving the political blogging fray, he now covers desert's quiet weirdness". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne was born in Louisiana
  59. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. [He] grew up poor in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans.
  60. ^ Genecov, Max (5 March 2018). "How Ken Layne Created a Publishing Oasis in a Desert Town of 8,000 People". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Since his days as a child living on the suburban edges of Phoenix, Arizona...
  61. ^ Netburn, Deborah (29 May 2015). "After leaving the political blogging fray, he now covers desert's quiet weirdness". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 April 2018. His dad grew up outside Phoenix in a time before air conditioning was common, and Layne spent his middle school years there as well. By the time he got his driver's permit in the early '80s, his family had moved to San Diego and he was making regular pilgrimages out to the Mojave.
  62. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. He also writes novels and records his own music.
  63. ^ Lickona, Matthew (26 April 2017). "The Desert Oracle's Ken Layne". San Diego Reader. Retrieved 25 April 2018. The musician part was with the Outriders; Layne was mentored by local stalwarts Country Dick Montana and Buddy Blue Seigal. "They weren't that much older, but they seemed so much wiser. They knew all the stuff. Talking to them was like taking two years of American literature courses."
  64. ^ Cage, Caleb (28 July 2011). "Populist Fatalism". The Rumpus. Retrieved 25 April 2018. In 2009, I interviewed author Ken Layne. He told me, "I had a kind of crisis just before [high school] graduation, in part set off by a lot of desert road trips and juvenile delinquent camping and discovering a book by Edward Abbey in the school library called Desert Solitaire."
  65. ^ Biller, Steven (9 April 2018). "Real Close — And Way Out". Palm Springs Life. Retrieved 25 April 2018. Layne eventually met and corresponded with Abbey...
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Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:American bloggers Category:American male journalists Category:American journalists Category:21st-century American novelists Category:American male writers Category:Place of birth missing (living people) Category:21st-century male writers Category:American broadcasters Category:People from California Category:Mojave Desert