Coexisting into the Great Unknown
WilderUtopia, Published by Jack Eidt, is dedicated to the question of Earth sustainability, finding society-level solutions to environmental, community, economic, transportation and energy needs. Our frame is Wilderness and its wildlife. Our endgame is Utopia: stabilizing ecologic relations through urban planning and design. We celebrate world culture and literary expression, and our inspiration sources from folklore, myth, and storytelling, as well as the rituals and traditions of the many peoples on the planet.
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Jack Eidt (jack dot eidt at wilderutopia dot com) is Founder and Publisher of WilderUtopia and Co-Founder of So Cal 350 Climate Action. He is an urban planner and designer, environmental journalist, and climate organizer, as well as award-winning fiction writer. In addition to regular articles on his culture blog, he has published opinion/editorials in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, EcoWatch, CommonDreams, Voice of OC, LA Progressive, CityWatch LA, Win:Win Journal, and CounterPunch. He has been featured on Los Angeles television news, Pacifica Radio, and NPR. He is Executive Producer of the nationally syndicated radio broadcast/podcast show EcoJustice Radio, sponsored by SoCal 350 and produced at KPFK Los Angeles. The show is heard on public radio in Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Columbus, OH, among other stations.
In 2004, he co-founded Wild Heritage Planners, an organization dedicated to sustainable environmental planning advocacy, proposing solutions to fight urban sprawl and save precious wild habitat. He has worked as a consultant on national and international development projects. As well, he spent three years designing, planning, and project managing theme park resorts for The Walt Disney Company.
In his role as an activist. Jack has worked to modify/mitigate/stop major land development, fossil fuel infrastructure, and toll road projects. He has organized major marches and public demonstrations, and helped form coalitions between labor, environmental, political, youth, faith, and political groups who have influenced policy and protected vulnerable communities and resources.
In 2014, he won both a Lannan Foundation Environmental Award and “Environmental Activist of the Year” from the Orange County League of Conservation Voters.
Jack is the author of the literary novel Nowhere Beckons, which won the 2017 Fiction Award at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. His adventure novel-in-progress, Monkey Charm, is based on his time living with the Miskitu of the Northeast Caribbean Coast of Honduras. The piece won Best Fiction awards at the Santa Barbara and Southern California Writers Conferences, as well as support from the Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Jack also won Best Fiction 2015 for his novel excerpt “Under the Waterfall” in Santa Barbara as well.
His fiction is published in the Luna Review, Borda Books, and Santa Barbara Literary Journal.
Jack is a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of California (OWAC) and contributes as a Community Editorial Board Member to the Voice of OC. He serves as a Board Member to the Biodiesel Cooperative of Los Angeles, as well as to Friends of Harbors, Beaches and Parks, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and management of wilderness and parkland in Southern California. He is a co-founding member of Tar Sands Action SoCal.
Jack earned a master’s degree from UCLA in Urban and Regional Development and a bachelor’s from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Environmental Studies with a minor in Creative Writing. He has traveled to some of the wildest places on Earth. He grew up in Massachusetts and Ohio, and has worked in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Montana, and Haiti. He is fluent in Spanish and has studied a multitude of languages.
