Kyle Paoletta is a journalist, critic, and the author of "American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest."

Acclaimed journalist Kyle Paoletta charts a geographic and historical path through America's uncompromising deserts, mapping the past and future of these cities and the other beachheads of civilization — from rural pueblos to sprawling exurbs — that make up the region known as “the American Southwest.”

Kyle Paoletta is a journalist, critic, and the author of "American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest."

The Baffler, August 2023 “Horror flicks, romantic comedies, courtroom dramas: these are the sorts of mid-budget movies that once formed the foundation of every Hollywood studio’s release calendar, bridging the months between Oscar season and summer blockbusters—that is, until they were decimated by sprawling franchises.

New York Magazine, October 2022 “As I traveled across the Southwest this summer, two competing visions of the borderland’s future were coming into focus — visions that map more neatly on to the polarized landscape of national politics than Democrats would like to admit, given that the region is full of Latino voters whom they recently considered to be a bank of safe votes.”

Posted on June 21, 2024 by Kyle Paoletta Leaving Las Vegas in the afternoon meant that Tess and I didn’t get to Palm Springs until well after nightfall. The sun set while we were cutting through the Mojave National Preserve on an old, sand-blasted road, Joshua Trees thick on either side that were shifted into haunting silhouettes by the gloaming.

Read featured reporting and clips on climate focused on understanding how individuals are responding to a world being rapidly transformed by ecological crises.

Press Rogue, a media criticism column (Harper’s Magazine). Essays On the Mountain Time zone (The New York Times Magazine)On covering the NBA during the coronavirus pandemic (Columbia Journalism Review)On the perplexing lack of observation decks in Boston ()On the GOP and conservative media’s Democratic scandal industrial complex ()On political journalists not over-learning the lessons of ...

November 28, 2017 September 11, 2018 Kyle Paoletta Few novelists working today are as obsessive about citation, reference, and homage as Alain Mabanckou, and none quite so ambivalent about the caché those allusions to literary history carry.

Contact Kyle Paoletta for commissioned articles, book club inquiries, or to just say hey.