  Broad absorption line (BAL) quasars are characterized by gas clouds that
absorb flux at the wavelength of common quasar spectral features, although
blueshifted by velocities that can exceed 0.1c. BAL features are interesting as
signatures of significant feedback, yet they can also compromise cosmological
studies with quasars by distorting the shape of the most prominent quasar
emission lines, impacting redshift accuracy and measurements of the matter
density distribution traced by the Lyman-alpha forest. We present a catalog of
BAL quasars discovered in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)
survey Early Data Release, which were observed as part of DESI Survey
Validation, as well as the first two months of the main survey. We describe our
method to automatically identify BAL quasars in DESI data, the quantities we
measure for each BAL, and investigate the completeness and purity of this
method with mock DESI observations. We mask the wavelengths of the BAL features
and re-evaluate each BAL quasar redshift, finding new redshifts which are 243
km/s smaller on average for the BAL quasar sample. These new, more accurate
redshifts are important to obtain the best measurements of quasar clustering,
especially at small scales. Finally, we present some spectra of rarer classes
of BALs that illustrate the potential of DESI data to identify such populations
for further study.
