@deanne5.bsky.social
Critically acclaimed writer. Books include Twentynine Palms (praised by Hunter S. Thompson as "A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer") and Blood Brothers (starred Kirkus, Newsweek excerpt, praised by Doug Brinkley, Thomas Powers).
Right now: from #U2, "Song of the Future," about Sarina Esmailzadeh, the Iranian schoolgirl who was beaten to death during the schoolgirl uprising protesting the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, arrested and killed for not wearing a hijab.
#iran #iranrevolution #u2 #Bono
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo8U...
For the 25th anniversary of Twentynine Palms, here's Anjelica Huston narrating the intro to Mustang. The two books are connected, as you can hear (.37 +, but hope you'll start at the top). It's a great honor of my literary life that Anjelica recorded this.
rarebirdbooks.bandcamp.com/track/introd...
New trailer for Blood Brothers - a "best book of the year" sez True West Magazine and the millions and "best new history," according to Barnes & Noble. Winner of Ohioana Book Award.
@booksky.club @simonandschuster.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/shorts/bUCFG...
Don't let Trump tell you what happened in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Read my account in Blood Brothers, and all about the Native American victory in that cataclysmic event, the one from which this country has yet to recover. @booksky.club #littlebighorn #sittingbull #custer #crazyhorse
06.02.2026 23:22 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Vance has steered Ohio along with the US into an iceberg, and it's not Greenland. Where's he coming from? This may interest you; wrote it before the 16 election, about an overlooked line in his memoir regarding a cousin who started America's most famous family feud.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
@longreads.com
19.01.2026 03:23 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
My Year as a Fire Nomad: new piece for LA Reported, in which I talk about fleeing the Palisades Fire, frequent moves while awaiting smoke remediation on my home, and becoming caught up in the kind of fire that has no source other than the Great Mystery.
lareported.substack.com/p/my-year-as...
Today's the 135th anniversary of #WoundedKnee. I recently wrote about Pete Hegseth's cancellation of the medals review for soldiers who took part in that massacre of Native Americans. Also: Buffalo Bill's lost film about it in book excerpt. @booksky.bsky.social
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/10/06/w...
"Deanne Stillman takes us on a journey as full of desolation and grandeur as the desert itself." - @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social
Spur Award. LA Press Club Award. Southwest Book of the Year. Raves Oregonian, Denver Post, Tucson Weekly. #greatgiftidea #booksky #truecrime #nonfiction #mojavedesert
"Looking across a desert panorama calms interior noise. The wide open space just shuts down the chatter. Then the impt stuff comes through. No static in the scenery. The eye can rest and therefore, the heart." - Psychology Today. See new trailer for Desert Reckoning.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5_S...
High-voltage new trailer for Desert Reckoning, a modern western re a manhunt for a hermit who killed a cop in the Mojave. Fathers & sons, America's obsession with guns, who lives in the desert & why, finding grace in the carnage. Spur Award best nonfiction. #booksky
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5_S...
This is a new podcast production of my play "Who Walks the Sands," monologues about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and longing and desire. They are a mashup of the real and the imaginary. There's also an interview with me following the production. #theatresky
redcircle.com/shows/626558...
The same people who lost their minds over renovations to Cracker Barrel are totally fine with the White House getting bulldozed
22.10.2025 20:56 — 👍 30077 🔁 8227 💬 732 📌 359
CONGRESS AS A FAMILY
#TheShutdown
Here at No Kings Washington DC! #NoKings
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New piece at @washingtonmonthly.com, about the Wounded Knee medals, Buffalo Bill's lost film about the massacre, Sitting Bull, and Pete Hegseth, with an excerpt from my book Blood Brothers.
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/10/06/w...
NEW TIME: Taos, Metta Theatre, 10/19, 2pm: a reading of my play "Reflections in a D'Back's Eye," directed by Bruce McIntosh. About America and guns, via the incident in which Gabby Giffords was wounded and a little girl who wanted to play baseball was killed. Also: the Grand Canyon. #theatresky
04.10.2025 00:19 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Pete Hegseth just ended the medals review for soldiers involved in the Wounded Knee massacre. Yet even Buffalo Bill tried to make amends with Native Americans, making a film about the incident with Lakota re-enactors. It flopped and vanished from the record. I wrote about this in Blood Brothers.
27.09.2025 17:19 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
For 9/11 24, my remembrance:
Shortly before 9/11, something told me that I might never again see my mother who lived in NYC. I changed plans and headed there on 9/10, landing shortly before the attack. "It looks like Hiroshima down here," she soon said on the phone.
www.truthdig.com/articles/911...
UPDATE: THIS HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO A COUPLE OF CAST ISSUES. WILL LET YOU KNOW WHEN RESCHEDULED. THANK YOU!
16.08.2025 17:00 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Taos, Metta Theatre, 8/17, 2pm: a reading of my play "Reflections in a D'Back's Eye," directed by Bruce McIntosh. About America's love affair w/guns, via the incident in which Gabby Giffords was wounded and a little girl who just wanted to play baseball was killed. With the Grand Canyon. #theatresky
15.08.2025 22:02 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
In honor of MM on the anni of her death, here's the trailer for my film "Marilyn Monroe Flees Her Crypt When Hugh Hefner Is Buried Next Door," w/Shayne Eastin, directed Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, produced @butcherbirdprod.bsky.social, "best experimental short" Indie X Fest. vimeo.com/944552498?sh...
04.08.2025 18:05 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Yes, alas.
30.07.2025 20:34 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Yesterday, there were two mass shootings in the US: NYC and Reno. In this essay about the discovery of an old Winchester in Great Basin National Park and our affair with guns, I talk about another mass shooting near Reno - 34 wild horses at Christmas time in 1998. lareviewofbooks.org/article/winc...
29.07.2025 21:12 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
Sometimes mail is fun! Just in from USPS: the 2025 @lapressclub.bsky.social Award for online political commentary, national, for my @washingtonmonthly.com piece, "Mothers, Sons, and Guns," published last year. It's my second LAPC award; the 1st was in 2013 for nonfiction, my book Desert Reckoning.
18.07.2025 19:11 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Donald Trump issued pardons to Joe Arpaio, Steve Bannon, six convicted war criminals, and over 1500 January 6th rioters, prompting serious questions about Biden's use of the autopen.
17.07.2025 01:07 — 👍 2374 🔁 352 💬 23 📌 11
Star light, star bright. My latest piece, "Alligator Alcatraz: The New ICE Detention Center Is a Sin Against Nature," in which I talk about Big Cypress National Preserve as a Dark Sky Park, and how the new floodlights are obliterating #starlight. #astronomy
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/07/15/a...
My latest piece, "Alligator Alcatraz: The ICE Detention Center Is a Sin Against Nature," in which I talk about Marjory Stoneman Douglas and her role in Big Cypress National Preserve, bringing attention to a place that had been written off. @therevelator.org
washingtonmonthly.com/2025/07/15/a...
The great novelist Martin Cruz Smith has passed away. He and I were in convo yrs ago for Writers Bloc, re December 6, about Japan just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a characteristically gripping tale and we had an excellent convo. RIP Martin and thank you.
www.amazon.com/December-Nov...
