Journalist John Glionna's Rebels & Outliers - Life on the Fringes & True American Grit

Lunchtime Conversations host Nanette Wiser talks with award-winning journalist, author and screenwriter John Glionna  about his global reporting for newspapers and magazines. He shares how he finds and tells the interesting offbeat stories about people discovered as a "Rover" now and in his time with Los Angeles Times. His newest book,  Rebels & Outliers - Real Stories of the American West delves into the complexities of life on the fringes and showcases his remarkable talent for uncovering the universal truths that connect us all.
**Read more about Glionna here and sign up for his blog.
Says Glionna about the book: "This story collection spans three decades of work for the Los Angeles Times and other publications, chronicling my search for characters and subcultures that capture the unmistakable characters and way-of-life of the American West. There’s a Navajo cop on a paralyzingly lonely beat, the Mojave Desert phone booth, the life and death of an Alaskan bush pilot, the night watchman of Alcatraz, the cross dresser in the Cowboy State and a prison baseball team that plays all home games. And much more … Writers write. Really, it's all I've ever done. After 35 years in the newspaper business, the last 26 spent at the Los Angeles Times, I am now trying to break new personal ground as a long-form nonfiction writer. I enjoy writing profiles of fascinating people and delving into subcultures. The best way to describe my approach to the craft is this: "I hang out with people and then I write about them." There's nothing rote to my approach. In interviews, I give as good as I get and, In the end, I believe, I emerge with a fuller sense of the person, place or event I'm trying to capture. I've worked up and down California and across the Far East, including China, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore. Now I'm focusing on the American West: the issues that confront westerners, the people making a mark here. I have also taught journalism as a part-time instructor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas."
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS...and the journey continues!
**My work has been included in such national anthologies as “Best American Sports Writing” and “Best Los Angeles Times Foreign Reporting.”
**Over the years, I have optioned the film rights to numerous stories and wrote a screenplay for Jon Peters based on my Los Angeles Times story that delved into the subculture of drag queens in Los Angeles. I currently have two film projects in the works: one on the sad and sweet life of a Jewish baker who cooked for the Nazis during World War Two and another on tent boxing in the Australian Outback.
**As a Seoul-based LA Times foreign correspondent from 2008 through 2012, my beat covered one-quarter of the world’s water mass: South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Pacific Islands. Whew.  I chronicled an often-raucous South Korea, and pulled stories out of North Korea, one of the most opaque places on earth. I also reported widely on Japan, including the deadly 2011 tsunami, Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown and its aftermath.
**As the Times Las Vegas bureau chief, I covered a large swath of the American West, writing about everything from people to politics. I’ve also written extensively about California and have co-taught a journalism course at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I left The Times in 2015.
**I am currently a freelance writer, dividing my time between Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. My work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Outside, California Sunday Magazine, Las Vegas Review Journal, Desert Companion magazine, Phoenix New Times and other publications.

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