Where the Climate Things Are: podcast & video interview
October 20, 2025 § Leave a comment
This 59 minute interview with the delightful Addie Thompson of Where the Climate Things Are was so much fun! We talk about, among other things:
Growing up between Vermont and Denver and discovering a love of winter and skiing
How fly fishing — in various locations throughout the US, including Addie’s favorite, Kennebago Lake — became a lifelong practice
Trip leading, group dynamics, and what time in the wilderness reveals about human connection
Why geological time, mass extinctions, and perspective can help with climate anxiety
The role of fiction in shifting climate paradigms and building new climate mythologies
Click here to watch the whole interview
Write on Four Corners with DelSheree Gladden: radio & podcast interview
September 25, 2025 § Leave a comment
Another in a series of highly enjoyable radio and podcast appearances in the aftermath of the publication of The Afterlife Project!
This thirty minute conversation with fellow novelist DelSheree Gladden on KSJE radio in Farmington, New Mexico will be especially interesting to writers, I think. Topics include climate fiction, the depth and complexity of fictional characters, the creative and research origins of The Afterlife Project, the bracing challenge of writing fiction that comes alive on the page while also getting at a deeper truth, balancing scientific research with story elements, Hemingway’s iceberg theory of fiction, revision as re-inhabiting stories like a vivid dream, the challenges and joys of teaching fiction, the power of literature, and the impact of stories on human affairs, the value of experiencing dark alternative futures, the enduring appeal of novels, and more. Listen here.
The Inner Game with Gwen Garcelon: radio & podcast interview on sacred nature and the new mythology
August 16, 2025 § Leave a comment
I LOVED this conversation with The Inner Game‘s Gwen Garcelon about THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT, spiritual evolution, animism, and the need for a new mythology to help us fulfill our destiny as a species to become the stewards rather than the exploiters of sacred nature. Listen to our 28 minute interview here – you won’t regret it! Also available on NPR podcasts.
“Messengers of the Eternal: Trees in Life & Literature” – new essay up at The Revelator
August 6, 2025 § 2 Comments
Such an honor to see this essay published at The Revelator, a beautiful and well-edited publication of the Center for Biological Diversity. I’ve been working on these ideas for quite some time; the essay gets at some ground truths for me about trees in fiction and also in the real world. I hope you enjoy it! Here’s a quick excerpt, and the full essay is here.
“Tolkien’s forests, similarly — where many of his most dramatic and evocative chapters take place — are gripping embodiments of this urgent wrestling match between darkness and light. The Old Forest, just beyond the borders of the bucolic Shire, is host not only to terrifying ring-wraiths but to uncanny and sometimes ravenously hostile ancient trees — and things get even worse in Mirkwood. But amid these forests of terror and danger there are also glades of joyous poetry and light, such as the alluring waystation of Rivendell and magical Lothlórien, where the cathedral-like spaces between the trees are filled with dappled golden light and the celestial music of elves.”
Burlington Free Press book round-up & a new interview at Cleaver
July 24, 2025 § Leave a comment
Just getting back from the inspiring whirlwind of The Afterlife Project book tour and almost missed a few things:
The Burlington Free Press featured The Afterlife Project in their “Summer Reading Guide of Books By Vermonters.” Needless to say, it’s an honor to be included!
Also an honor, and a conversation I very much enjoyed having, is this interview with Andrea Caswell, editor of the well-known Philadelphia-based literary magazine, Cleaver.
We discuss climate fiction, deep time, research, the novelist as archaeologist, weaving together multiple timelines, the inspirations for The Afterlife Project, and more. Check it out, I think you’ll enjoy it!
Vermont Public Radio interview with Mitch Wertlieb
June 12, 2025 § Leave a comment
What a fun and interesting conversation with Mitch Wertlieb on Vermont Public’s Vermont Edition! We talked about the inspirations and scientific research behind THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT, time travel, post-apocalyptic fiction, paleo-climatology, novel research in the great outdoors, whether stories can move the needle on the climate debate, and much more.
I drove up to VPR’s Colchester studios to record the show, and although we’ve spoken in the past this is my first time meeting Mitch in person. He’s a truly wonderful guy and a GREAT interviewer. If you’re remotely interested in any of these topics, listen to the whole interview here. (As an added bonus, the second half of the segment has beta on some great uncrowded hiking trails in Vermont!)
My thanks to Vermont Public, Mitch Wertlieb, Jon Ehrens, Andrea Laurion, Isabella Nugent, Page One Media, Podium Publishing, and the talented, lovely, and indefatigable Julia Jensen.
“What Does a Million Years Mean to You?” New booklist essay up at Literary Hub
June 4, 2025 § Leave a comment
Very happy to have this piece up at LitHub, one of my favorite literary on-line venues.
Excerpt below:
“The deep-time perspective of all these books has given me a better vantage point on the current moment, not only as it relates to the trajectory of the human species but also to the long and varied story of life on Earth. While I do fear that humanity’s circumstances are likely to get worse before they get better, the zoomed-out perspective of deep time has given me surprising new grounds for optimism.
To paraphrase Marcia Bjornerud in Timefulness, it’s not the end of nature we’re looking at, but the end of the illusion that we’re not part of nature.”
Read the whole piece here.
Tim Weed 