Alta Journal

Alta Journal Alta Journal is a quarterly magazine celebrating and examining California and the West.

Alta Journal, launched in Fall 2017, is a magazine, website and series of events that will provide a fresh, smart, literate take on the issues, culture, personalities, politics, lifestyle and history of California. Alta’s quarterly magazine features some of the state’s best writers, photographers and illustrators.

For Alta, Laura Dominguez traces how Los Angeles and Rock Springs, Wyoming, are reckoning with 19th-century massacres of...
07/06/2026

For Alta, Laura Dominguez traces how Los Angeles and Rock Springs, Wyoming, are reckoning with 19th-century massacres of Chinese immigrants—and how communities choose to remember, mourn, and mark violence.

Read more at the link below.

🎨 by Zoe Matthiessen

Do you know the history of California’s first taco truck? Check out Gustavo Arellano’s piece on the humble truck that be...
07/06/2026

Do you know the history of California’s first taco truck? Check out Gustavo Arellano’s piece on the humble truck that became the first outpost of King Taco, founded by Raúl O. Martinez.

A delicious slice of California and Mexican American history. Link below.

Susan Straight's Mecca is the California Book Club's June 2026 selection. Here, Straight entwines the lives of memorable...
07/06/2026

Susan Straight's Mecca is the California Book Club's June 2026 selection. Here, Straight entwines the lives of memorable characters in and around the eponymous Inland Empire town.

Join us on June 18 at 5 p.m. PT when Susan Straight sits down with host John Freeman and a special guest to discuss the novel and its enduring themes. Until then, read along with us throughout the month.

Link in comments.

A hospital stay begins with a stain on the ceiling that looks like a face. It ends with a question: what if other people...
07/06/2026

A hospital stay begins with a stain on the ceiling that looks like a face. It ends with a question: what if other people see you more clearly than you see yourself?

In this unsettling fiction story from Issue 25, a brief illness spirals into obsession. Read the story at the link in our comments.

Reyna Grande's Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can't Forget is a standout collection that explores the lasting scar...
07/06/2026

Reyna Grande's Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can't Forget is a standout collection that explores the lasting scars of immigration and racism. Anne Pedersen dives into it, read the full review via the link in comments.

Looking for a heartfelt read this week? Dagoberto Gilb's "Prima" explores family bonds, memory, and reconnection through...
07/06/2026

Looking for a heartfelt read this week? Dagoberto Gilb's "Prima" explores family bonds, memory, and reconnection through an impromptu reunion.

Tap the link in our comments to read it now.

🎨 by Victor Juhasz


The sight of a California condor remains one of the great hopes of many animal lovers in the state: the chance to glimps...
06/06/2026

The sight of a California condor remains one of the great hopes of many animal lovers in the state: the chance to glimpse a bird that barely made it back from the brink of extinction. And one of the best places to see them is in Pinnacles National Park.

Joy Lanzendorfer embarks on a quest to catch sight of the elusive condor. Tap the link in our comments to read more.

📸 Tim Huntington


“Yoko really is not an object maker in the same way that we think of visual artists.” There’s no blueprint for a museum ...
06/06/2026

“Yoko really is not an object maker in the same way that we think of visual artists.”

There’s no blueprint for a museum retrospective when the featured artist’s practice relies profoundly on the immaterial—the prompt, the score, the idea. Such was the task for curators at the Broad with Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, the first solo museum exhibition in Southern California for the visionary artist, musician, and activist.

The exhibition spans seven decades of a genre-defying career that began long before Ono (now 93) and her very public private life became cultural mythology.

📷️ © Yoko Ono; Photo by Clay Perry.

Read more about it in the link in the comments.

Hummingbirds are one of only three groups of birds that learn their songs by listening to their elders. They are also th...
06/06/2026

Hummingbirds are one of only three groups of birds that learn their songs by listening to their elders. They are also the only group that sings with their tail feathers, and during a courtship dive, a male Anna's reaches speeds high enough to make those feathers vibrate into something almost like a note.

UC Riverside biologist Chris Clark has spent his career figuring out how the physics of those feathers became a language. In Alta, Jason G. Goldman on the research.

Link in the comments.

What does country music sound like when you listen from both sides of the border?When Johnny Cash recorded at Folsom Pri...
06/06/2026

What does country music sound like when you listen from both sides of the border?

When Johnny Cash recorded at Folsom Prison in 1968, he heard something permanent in those walls. Decades later, Los Tigres del Norte filled that same space with accordions, reframing a familiar American sound through a different history.

From border radio stations to Bakersfield stages, country music has long traded melodies, instruments, and stories with Mexican traditions. The result is a shared landscape, where corridos and cowboy ballads echo one another across generations and geography.

Link in comments to read more.

📸 Lance Dawes/Courtesy of Los Tigres Del Norte

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