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.
Seven Days reviews THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT
June 4, 2025 § Leave a comment
This penetrating and wise review is a particular honor; Seven Days is a venerable journalistic institution here in my home state of Vermont. My thanks go out the reviewer, Margot Harrison, who is a novelist herself, and whose insights therefore carry a particular charge for me.
My favorite excerpt below, though I recommend that you read the whole review here.
“Remembering a trip to Dinosaur National Monument as a child, when he first sensed the “otherworldly vastness of geological time,” Nick reminisces about a vanished world in which humanity’s own extinction was already foreshadowed:
‘From Dinosaur they drove west, into the heart of fossil gas extraction country, stopping for another picnic dinner at a highway pullout: cheddar cheese, summer sausage, and more of those improbably fat blueberries. Light and shadow; the golden-red dusk still hazy from the forest fires; the tall orange flames of the flaring wells like monumental torches arranged across the desert landscape.’
In such passages, Weed reminds us why cli-fi matters: The tools of fiction, including elegiac literary prose, empower him to push past numbing statistics and bring home the impact of environmental crisis on the individual.”
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!
THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT is a Middlebury Magazine Editors’ Pick
March 10, 2025 § 1 Comment
It’s an honor to receive this notice from my alma mater, with a nice little book review as well. Here’s a pull quote:
“The dangers [the characters] endure along the way are set against an unfolding and impossible love story across the vastness of geological time, as the scientists work to keep humans in existence. It may sound like an end-of-the-world tale, but it defines the strength and bravery of human beings and what they will do to preserve this precious thing we call life in the face of overwhelming odds.” — Middlebury Magazine
Good news from the 92nd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Awards
August 2, 2023 § Leave a comment
Happy to report that two unpublished short stories have earned nods in the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition (Eighth Place & Honorable Mention, Mainstream/Literary Short Story category). The stories, “Under the Highway” and “Seabirds,” are part of a collection, Tickets to the Reckoning, that’s currently being shopped around to publishers. Hopefully it will be available for your reading pleasure soon!
New short fiction up at Pangyrus
January 18, 2023 § Leave a comment
‘Today a flock of crows has gathered. Half a dozen of the birds with their glossy blue-black feathers, come to peck at beetles he supposes, or some other small insect involved in the decomposition of dead matter. He strides up to the crows, brandishing his cane.
“Bugger off, now! This is a burial site, not a feeding place for scavengers!”
The crows tilt their heads to stare up at him. Their obsidian eyes are insolent, almost bored-looking, by the sight of the heavy filigreed cane-head whistling through the air above them.
“Very well, then. But don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”
He takes careful aim and swings. The crows flap off, but one wheels, cawing and swooping belligerently back down at him. He aims the cane and swings again, and this time he feels the jolt of an actual connection. The crow lets out a low grunt as it flips to the ground, one black wing jutting out from its broken body as it struggles to get up from the hemlock needles.
He brings the cane-head down on the crow’s skull; it collapses with an audible crunch, like a boiled egg. He draws the blade and skewers the creature’s broken body, walking it up into the forest where he digs a little trench in the sodden ground, kicks some leaves over it, and wipes the blade clean.
That’s more like it now, he says to himself, sheathing the blade as he walks down toward the house. You just have to confront them one by one.“
Read the whole story here. Listen to a brief audio piece about the historical figure who inspired the story here.
“250 Writers and Poets of Excellence” at Brilliant Light Publishing
January 23, 2020 § Leave a comment
Pleased to note that I’ve been named to a list of “250 Writers and Poets of Excellence” at Brilliant Light Publishing, a new literary organization whose admirable mission is to “promote the work of poets and writers from the New England community who illuminate the inner and outer states of our natural and cultural environment.”
Honored to be included on this list along with many other New England writers whose work I admire. Click here or on the logo above to visit Brilliant Light and support their noble mission!
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)!
Novel-in-Progress Long-listed for Historical Novel Society New Novel Award
August 21, 2018 § 4 Comments
Pleased to note that the Historical Novel Society has named my novel-in-progress, The Confession of Michael Martin, to the Long List for their 2018 New Novel Award. This is a great honor, and I take it as a positive sign for the ultimate success of the book, which I’ve been working on for a number of years but very few people have read. The HNS listing reads, in part: “A novel of adventure, friendship, and immigrant life inspired by the true story of early American outlaws, intriguingly different from Hollywood mythologies.”
New short fiction out in Blueline
June 12, 2017 § Leave a comment
Pleased to see my short story, “The Knife,” out in the lovely new edition of Blueline, a print-only literary magazine dedicated to the “spirit of the Adirondacks.” This is a story that’s been in the works for a long time, involving a young man from the city who moves to rural Vermont to work for an unorthodox businessman who teaches him to hunt, with troubling results.
The story does not appear in A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, so for now at least, the only way to read it is to order your own copy of Blueline (issue 38).
Tim Weed 