Contributor Spotlight: J. A. Tyler

J. A. Tyler’s piece “The Second Non-Death Dream // Re-Dreamt” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 3, out now.

How long have you been writing?
In the sixth grade I wrote a choose-your-own-adventure book without the choices. It was about a boy and a dog and a castle and a goblin. In 2005, roughly 15 years later, I started submitting my work for publication.

What’s your connection to the Midwest?
I live in Colorado, one of the most beautiful places on earth.

How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
There is an ease and depth to this area that filters through and into my work. My writing is full of pine trees and mountains, rivers and dirt, fields and bowing wheat and the occasional lake, and choked too with weather – sun, winter, rain, falling leaves.

Why do you believe there has never really been a regionalist push for Midwestern writing in the past like there has with the South or even the West Coast?
It may be an issue of population. Or it may be that it is coming, and we should gear up.

How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
Some days I love it, some days I don’t. But I do use Facebook and Twitter for my own work and that of Mud Luscious Press and its imprints. Tumblr escapes me right now like a tremendous woman who I lust for but who hates me.

Favorite book?
Shit. Perhaps: The Old Man and the Sea. We Make Mud. How the Days of Love & Diphtheria. Scary, No Scary. Catcher in the Rye.

Favorite food?
Coffee. Pesto. Are either of those ‘foods’?

If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
Again, shit. Perhaps: Ernest Hemingway (though he’d probably call me names). Peter Markus (I’m sure he thinks I’m a stalker). Kurt Vonnegut (I’d even take up smoking again).

Where can we find more information about you?
www.chokeonthesewords.com

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