One to Watch: Writer Rohini Walker’s Desert Alchemy
The southern California high desert region is rapidly becoming internationally recognized as a hub of arts & culture, with the small town of Joshua Tree as the focal point of the area’s growing influence.
Much like the emergence of Miami as a global destination for artists and culture vultures after its inaugural Art Basel show in 2002, Joshua Tree is fast becoming a major center for artists, writers, musicians and creatives of many stripes. According to Joshua Tree National Park, in 2021, visitors to the high desert exceeded 3 million people.
One of the key players responsible for putting the area on the global arts and cultural map over the last several years is British writer Rohini Walker, who’s been based in Joshua Tree since 2014, back when the California high desert region was known mainly among fringe, avant garde artists and writers and largely unheard of in the mainstream, let alone internationally.
Walker is one of the co-founders of the popular and well-loved print periodical Luna Arcana. Her expertly discerning content curation and lyrical, poetic writing for the publication, as well as her insightful and memorable articles and editorials for the southern California broadcast behemoth, KCET, have put her firmly in the spotlight as a writer emerging out of Joshua Tree.
Due to Luna Arcana’s growing national and international audience, Walker and her creative partner, visual artist, Martin Mancha have secured an agreement with the prolific arts publisher The Artlands to publish a series of anthologies. For an independent publication to get a publishing deal from an arts publisher during a global pandemic is quite the achievement, and is testament to the quality and caliber of Luna Arcana and the creatives at its helm.
In 2021, The Alchemy of Earth & Sky, Volume 1, was published by The Artlands, with more to come in the next few years. The first volume has proven to be a runaway success for a debut art & literary book. Walker’s evocative, tactile and rhythmic use of words has made the book a must-have collector’s item for the growing numbers of people falling in love with the California high desert as a place of barren beauty and thriving creativity.
You can get your hands on a copy of The Alchemy of Earth & Sky, Volume 1 from The Artlands.