1. Ken Layne is an American writer, publisher and broadcaster best known for his political blogging in the early 2000s and his association with Gawker Media and Wonkette from 2006 to 2012.
13 Facts About Ken Layne
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Ken Layne is the proprietor of Desert Oracle, a self-published periodical and radio program exploring themes related to the Mojave Desert and the Southwestern United States.
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Ken Layne later became "national correspondent" for the flagship Gawker website.
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Ken Layne became the West Coast writer for Gawker Media's "absurdist" and "vicious" political humor site Wonkette in 2006, and later its managing editor.
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Gawker owner Nick Denton spun off Wonkette in 2008, along with two other websites, and Ken Layne became Wonkette owner.
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Ken Layne deleted the post after several advertisers, including Papa John's Pizza, pulled their advertising from the site.
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Ken Layne sold Wonkette to Los Angeles journalist Rebecca Schoenkopf in 2012.
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In February 2015, Ken Layne created Desert Oracle: The Voice of the Desert, a quarterly periodical focused on the "weirdness of the desert" in the Southwestern United States.
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Ken Layne has collected Desert Oracle articles in book form, the first volume of which published in 2020.
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Ken Layne formerly was a columnist for USC Annenberg School's Online Journalism Review, and wrote a column called "Desert Rattler" for LA CityBeat, both now defunct.
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Ken Layne was born in Louisiana, where he lived in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans as a child.
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Ken Layne moved to the Phoenix, Arizona suburbs for middle school, and later to San Diego, where he first began visiting the Mojave desert.
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Ken Layne has cited Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey as an influence, whom he met and corresponded with before Abbey's death in 1989.