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
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!
Interviews & novel excerpt at The Colorado Sun and the Daily Sun-Up podcast
July 14, 2025 § Leave a comment
Very much enjoyed this interview on The Colorado Sun’s daily podcast, The Daily Sun-Up. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
The Colorado Sun has also published this excerpt of THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT and an extended on-line interview about the origins of the novel, the challenges of writing it, the author’s Colorado roots, and more.
All this media attention was perfectly timed to coincide with THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT’s Colorado book tour, which has been a smashing success. My gratitude to Kevin Simpson and everyone at The Colorado Sun!
New interviews, reviews, and book roundups featuring THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT
June 20, 2025 § Leave a comment
This interview with LA-based journalist, gamer, and film buff Paul Semel was especially fun because the conversation ranged into questions of film influences, including my ideal casting choices for the main characters of THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT. Read the whole interview here.
Quick excerpt: “In terms of influence, film and TV weren’t as important as other books, but my guess is that movies like Interstellar, Contact, and Arrival sort of gave me permission to pursue a story foregrounding the kind of “big” ambitious topics I was interested in, like space-time, general relativity, and the future of humanity, while TV series like Battlestar Galactica reminded me that when the survival of the human species is an open question, it can generate high stakes and robust dramatic tension. And the popularity of the great nature documentaries, like Planet Earth, showed that the awesome spectacles of life on Earth could be intrinsically riveting for mass audiences.”
Very cool: THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT was featured in a new scifi books roundup at Transfer Orbit, a newsletter run by Vermont writer Andrew Liptak that provides regular look at the latest news within the science fiction community, featuring analysis and commentary and updates about fiction, writing, and the future of reading.
Also very cool: THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT was featured in a best beach reads roundup by The Cullman Times in Cullman, Alabama—with the article also syndicated by the Rome News-Tribune in Rome, Georgia. Making inroads in the American south!
I also loved this notably glowing review from Shannon at It Starts at Midnight.
Quick excerpt: “This is hands down one of the most thought-provoking books that I have ever read. Which is saying something, because thought-provoking books are kind of my thing . . . I have so much to say about this book, but I equally want to tell you no more. Because this is the sort of story that needs to be experienced to be appreciated.” Read the whole review here.
I enjoyed reading this thoughtful and generally positive (if at times slightly grudging ;)) review from the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Finally, I very much appreciated this review of the audiobook on Instagram from @bookboundblogger.
Quick excerpt: “I am very picky about my sci-fi books. This one hit the mark! It didn’t feel like reading a novel. It felt like witnessing a slow‑motion disaster unfold with stunning imagery and quiet heartbreak. The science felt authentic. The emotion was raw. The tension never let up. It gave geography class, climate awareness, and gut‑punch storytelling all in one, but never preachy or feeling like an info-dump. Just deeply human.” Read the whole review here.
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.
Television Interview: “Here We Are” with Wendy O’Connell on BCTV
May 26, 2025 § Leave a comment
Such a fun conversation! We talked about my early life, travel, writing, teaching, The Afterlife Project, and much more. Wendy is an excellent, relaxed interviewer, skilled at putting her interlocutor at ease. The words and laughter flowed, and the thirty-odd minutes went by so fast. This will be up on YouTube indefinitely, so if you’re interested bookmark it, and if you’ve got half an hour some time, give it a watch!
Interview with novelist Dariel Suarez at Fiction Writers Review
June 15, 2021 § Leave a comment
Pleased to share this lively and illuminating recent conversation about fiction, politics, Cuba, and Dariel’s new novel, The Playwright’s House. Read the full interview here.
On surviving my first television interview
January 3, 2020 § 2 Comments
Actually, I very much enjoyed this recent televised conversation with Rick Cochran of Cape Cod Writers Center’s “Books and the World” program about fiction as an antidote to loneliness, setting as transportation, novels vs stories, travel and writing, what’s on the drawing board for me, and much more. The interview is slightly over 27 minutes long.
Literary Roadhouse Podcast: Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever.”
December 20, 2018 § Leave a comment
A heartfelt thanks to Anais Concepción, the smart & effervescent host of Literary Roadhouse, a weekly podcast on a public-domain short story. It’s a fun and lively podcast with the noble mission of celebrating the short story form, and I had a very good time hosting a recent episode on Edith Wharton’s masterpiece, “Roman Fever.” You can listen to the podcast here—and to a wide-ranging follow-up conversation on video between Anais and me about nature, Will Poole’s Island, a career combining writing and travel, National Geographic, Cuba, my goals of as a teacher of writing, the need to break writing “rules,” new writing projects, history as a foreign country, escapism, and more. Watch the video interview here.
Radio interview: The Round Schoolhouse & the legend of Thunderbolt
December 10, 2018 § 2 Comments
V
ery enjoyable conversation this morning with Olga Peters of the Green Mountain Mornings radio show on WKVT Radio 100.03 FM about the local landmark and the historical characters that inspired my novel-in-progress, The Confession of Michael Martin, one of fifteen works selected for the 2018 long list of the Historical Novel Society’s New Novel Award. HNS describes it as “A novel of adventure, friendship, and immigrant life inspired by the true story of early American outlaws that is intriguingly different from Hollywood mythologies.”
The history behind the story is also of local interest because it represents a landmark in early Vermont and Brattleboro publishing. It’s of general interest because it’s an early entry in the great American outlaw myth, and because of what it tells us about the power of narrative to grip the human imagination and about the blurred lines between what we call history and what we call fiction. I’ll be presenting the research in a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Brattleboro Words Project at 6pm this Thursday, December 13, at 118 Elliot Street in Brattleboro. If you’re in the neighborhood, please come by!
If you’re interested in the topic but can’t make the discussion, listen to the 10 minute interview here. My heartfelt thanks to Lissa Weinmann of The Brattleboro Words Project and Olga Peters (feel better soon, Olga)!
Tim Weed 