“John Glionna is a true original who could roll out of bed, wander into an empty town and with his sideways sensibilities and peculiar passions come back with a go-to-hell, never-told tale before lunch. If you're a writer, you'll wonder, ‘Now why didn't I think of that?’ If you're a reader, you're in for a treat. He understands that stories are all we have, in the end, to understand the world, each other and ourselves.”
—Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist, author of The Soloist, a New York Times bestseller
“John Glionna starts with the premise that everybody has a story to tell, and he goes on to listen and write the hell out of it. His stories in Rebels and Outliers take you from deserts to prisons, where you meet gay cowboys, a cross dresser, a midwife, a professional gatecrasher and a postmaster trying to keep her near-ghost town alive. Glionna's stories will change the way you look at humanity with all its glorious permutations, and never again to dismiss anybody as boring.”
—Barbara Demick, National Book Award finalist, author of the recently published Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
“Really, how does Glionna find these people? It’s his secret sauce, the step-stone to telling singular American stories. I hope he keeps finding them so we can marvel at the way life unfolds in so many quirky and challenging ways, especially across the American the West. This is a fantastic collection.”
—Roger Smith, former nacional editor, Los Angeles Times, editor, USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.
“This book overflows with tales of dreamers, schemers, misfits and renegades. John Glionna delivers their stories with his customary verve, compassion and humor. Each essay bristles with life and passion and the joy we all crave. Together, they are an unparalleled ode to the 21st century American West.”
—James Rainey, senior Los Angeles Times reporter and media writer
“John Glionna has traveled this vast land and listened to its voices. With a poet's eye and a raconteur's gleam, he has given us unforgettable characters that represent an America in full: restless, defiant, broken, joyous, scheming and redemptive. A great mosaic of who we are.”
— Jeffrey Fleischman, author of Good Night, Forever and Last Dance
“John M. Glionna’s Reels and Outliers: Real Stories of the American West is a captivating collection that immerses readers in the rugged, still-untamed spirit of the American frontier. Glionna’s prose is as sharp and evocative as the landscapes he describes, capturing the essence of the modern West with vivid detail and emotional depth. His eye for the extraordinary in the ordinary breathes life into the unforgettable characters he chronicles—individuals whose resilience, rebellion, and distinctiveness leave a lasting impression. Each story is a testament to the complexity and diversity of those who’ve shaped this iconic region, from renegades and outcasts to dreamers and adventurers. Glionna doesn’t merely recount their adventures; he brings them to life, allowing readers to walk beside them through hardship and triumph. With a rare blend of narrative skill and historical insight, Rebels and Outliers is an engrossing exploration of the American West’s most fascinating figures, and a must-read for anyone who loves good stories well-told.”
—David Freed, author of the best-selling Cordell Logan mystery series
“John Glionna has an uncanny eye for ‘rebels and outliers’ who make our world so much more interesting, if we just pause to see and hear them. His heartfelt storytelling unearths the soul of every story as his art intersects with real life.”
—Diana Dawson, former Kansas City Star reporter, associate professor of journalism, University of Texas/Austin, founder of the Moody College Writing Support Program
“John Glionna has a rare gift as a journalist. It's the ability to probe into the human soul, to find out what drives people to follow uncommon paths. His subjects aren't powerbrokers or celebrities. In Rebels and Outliers, the protagonists range from workaday individuals who try to right wrongs to community eccentrics to folks who are just struggling to cope with their patch of America in the 21st century. In a newsroom, Glionna would commonly be described as a ‘human interest’ reporter—but that phrase seems much too small to describe the humanity of his work.”
—Scott Harris, former Los Angeles Times columnist and international bon vivant
“I had the distinct honor, privilege and delight of copy-editing many of John Glionna’s Column Ones for the Los Angeles Times, where we were colleagues for several years. Glionna was among that relatively small group of gifted wordsmiths whose bylines were always eagerly welcomed across my editing transom—a flashing signal that polished, invigorating, well-crafted narrative prose lay ahead, with scant need for correction or revision, elegantly describing some person’s unique life story or situation. This encompassing collection of poignant stories takes me back to those days, and it is indeed a treat to read them once again. I advise you to partake of this delectable literary buffet. It will be time well spent.”
—Dave Bowman, Los Angeles Times copy editor, recipient of 31 awards for headline excellence
“John Glionna magnificently mines the margins, the often overlooked edges where he finds a mother lode of compelling characters and situations. He celebrates his rebels and outliers, eloquently capturing each in exuberant prose that will whet your appetite for more.”
—Ed Boyer, former Los Angeles Times staff writer and editor
“For decades, John Glionna has roamed the American West like few other journalists, plumbing the region’s wild, rebellious and often quirky heart. In Rebels and Outliers, he introduces us to unforgettable characters—a modern-day nomad, a homeless Santa, a cross-dresser in cowboy country—who insist on plotting their own path in a frequently cruel world.”
—Mitchell Landsberg, former Los Angeles Times staff writer and senior editor
“‘Glionna stories’ are what we at the Los Angeles Times came to call those delightful deep dives into the overlooked corners of the American West. John Glionna made a career out of zagging while others zigged, finding and telling the stories of the outliers, and ultimately creating a word album filled with snapshots of humanity. All are brought to life through Glionna’s masterful writing and storytelling in the highest tradition of Calvin Trillin and Tom Wolfe, with a zesty dash of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson.”
—Ann O’Neill, former crime and justice reporter at the Los Angeles Times and CNN
“This is not overstating it—John Glionna is our new Steinbeck, the guy who knew about ‘the urge to be someplace else.’ He’s another Cormac, a writer who knew about the road and 'setting out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light.’ And maybe most of all, he’s our Kerouac, a hitchhiker lugging a typewriter, the maverick with his scroll, the dharma bum with his ‘battered suitcases piled on the sidewalk again.’ He can take you on a jolting 40-mile ride with a tribal cop through the Navajo rez, or he’ll point out the abandoned Barbie doll at a phone booth in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Forest or trees, Glionna’s your man.”
—Mark McDonald, former New York Times foreign correspondent and Pulitzer nominee
“Reading this rollicking collection of John Glionna’s work put me back in the thrall of the insightful writing and dogged reporting I first admired under his many bylines in the Los Angeles Times. The guy has a sixth sense when it comes to finding incredible real-life stories, and through deft storytelling, Glionna serves up gritty truths not only about the American West but about the American spirit.”
—Ben Hellwarth, author of Sealab: America’s Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor
"Rebels and Outliers is for anyone who wants to go on a journey—not only to understand this country and its hidden corners, but the people who make it come alive. John Glionna is a master storyteller. He introduces us to people who have since passed on, but live forever in this collection of exquisite stories from around the country. This book should be required reading for all feature writers looking to elevate their craft, and for anyone who wants to better understand how we live. Glionna gives us a gift, a reported travelogue with real-life characters, reminding us of the vast beauty, humor and wonder of humanity.”
—Erika Hayasaki, author of Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family, an NPR Best Book of 2022
“Whenever I saw John Glionna’s byline in the Los Angeles Times, I made certain to flag the piece for future reading. Glionna’s writing skills are so strong, and the stories he tells so compelling, that I didn’t want to read in haste as I was digesting the day’s news. I went back later to allow myself to fully envision the people and places of the American West that Glionna captures so beautifully. By the end of his essays, I feel like I’ve been to the rural places he visits and been in the presence of those he’s describing. Glionna’s profiles are not only beautifully written and full of empathy, they remind us of the remarkable people we regularly encounter, but with whom we rarely interact. Without exception, his accounts make me want to hit the road and to experience the American West he does.”
—Larry Mantle, host of “AirTalk with Larry Mantle,” Southern California Public Radio 89.3
“The narratives gathered here perform what storytelling has always done best: help us see others and our world in new ways, particularly when guided by someone who has a unique lens for finding the ridiculous, beautiful glory in regular humans who are anything but regular. They are stories of ordinary people who live with courage and grace and madness and beauty, and the writer sees them clear and writes them clean. Like works of art, they stay with you after, and they make you remember something about being alive that you knew once but had forgotten.”
—Jeff Brazil, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist
“Each tale expertly tells the story of an interesting or unusual person or thing that Glionna has encountered over his years traveling through the western US on behalf of a number of publications such as the Los Angeles Times and the Las Vegas Review Journal. The stories clearly illustrate Glionna’s devotion to the craft of writing—he is a master storyteller and it shows in his work.”
—Richard Moreno, author of Frontier Fake News: Nevada Sagebrush Humorists and Hoaxsters, 2007 Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award recipient
