If you want a glance at what the future might look like, look at Bombay Beach. Situated on the remains of the Salton Sea, one of California’s most infamous ecological disasters, the community was essentially a ghost town for decades. Bird and fish skeletons littered the beaches that had been meant, in another life, for luxury travelers. Everything smelled terrible. The place was dismal, frequented mostly by photographers or the occasional filmmaker who needed a particularly apocalyptic set on a budget.

Then the artists arrived. It takes a special kind of person to see possibility in ruins — and I don’t mean the possibility of making a profit. I mean the chance to create something substantial and hopeful in a place that, at first glance, feels anything but.     

In the past several years, artists and the Bombay Beach Biennale have brought the region back to life. This year, a new festival joins the fold – the Bombay Beach Lit Fest, taking place from March 30 through April 2. Artists and writers from the California desert and beyond will join Bombay Beach residents in celebrating a weekend of literature, panels, art and music performances, fireside chats, and more. 

The festival is the brainchild of writers Gina Frangello and Rob Roberge, who are based in many places but can often be found in the desert outside of Bombay Beach. Originally planned for March 2020, literally the weekend that the lockdown was issued in Los Angeles, the festival is finally taking shape after three years of waiting.

“No ticket sales, no wristbands, no sponsors, no merch, no separation of performers from the audience,” Frangello said. “After canceling what was supposed to be our inaugural event in March 2020 when the pandemic hit, we’re back with many of our original performers plus new literary rock stars and concepts like a whole Environmental Day. We can’t wait to welcome the literary community to this haven of creativity.”

The festival aims to feature local writers and topics as much as possible. There will be panels on haunted desert debacles and the history of vandalism; stories that center women writers and characters of color; a fireside chat about the history of punk rock; group readings from Kelp Journal, UCR, and The Desert Split Open; whole-body workshops; and more. The events will take place at some of Bombay Beach’s most popular DIY venues, including The Legion, the BBAC cafe (Bombay Beach Arts & Culture headquarters), and The Temple to the Scientific Method, to name a few.

Most art festivals involve some sort of substantial financial involvement — whether it’s a big-ticket price at the door or the expectation for participants to purchase as much of a writer or artist’s work as possible — but this festival is trying something different. It’s organized and run entirely by volunteers, and none of the participants are paid to show up. The focus is on the community aspect — coming together because of a shared passion for art and the written word, not because anyone is being paid to be there.

The festival also feels like an homage to other artists who looked beyond the standard “hubs” of creativity — New York City, Paris, Tokyo, the usual big cities — and sought inspiration in towns, deserts, and coasts that the art world had mostly written off as being unsophisticated or illegitimate. 

When I said earlier that Bombay Beach could give us a glimpse of the future, I didn’t mean our apocalyptic future. I meant our artistic one — a future made and sustained by artists, taking the pieces of our broken present and weaving them into something different and probably better.