Tim Jones-Yelvington

About Me

I live and write in Chicago. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Sleepingfish, Annalemma, Pank, Keyhole, Monkeybicycle and others.

My short fiction chapbook "Evan's House and the Other Boys who Live There" is forthcoming in Spring 2011 in "They Could No Longer Contain Themselves," a multi-author volume from Rose Metal Press.

I am guest editing the October 2010 online issue of Pank to feature Queer prose & poetry.

I contribute to the group blog "Big Other" and maintain my personal blog "Ejaculations of a Perverse Adult."

With Megan Milks, I co-host "Uncalled-for Readings," Chicago's "mostly Queer, mostly prose" reading series.

I wear costumes for live readings, and have been dubbed "the Lady Gaga of the Chicago lit scene."

I work for a community foundation that funds progressive community organizers and social justice activists.

Why do you write?

This Dodie Bellamy quote inspires me:

"What I long for in writing is the authentic, whether it's collage, porn, or Alice Munro. By authentic I'm not necessarily talking about verisimilitude or naturalism. Authentic doesn't need to mimic 'real' life. In Bush-hostaged America, 'real' life needs to be questioned at every turn. Something can be highly contrived and still be authentic, if it's upfront in its contrivance. I'm drawn to writing that touches core human issues, how we categorize the world, how we survive the chaos that engulfs us. Gossip as a labor of disenfranchized subjectivity feels rich, as do the cagey subversions of Kevin [Killian's] Amazon reviews. When the ground shifts beneath the reader's feet, even the teeniest bit, this is good. The ground is already shifting. We need to start feeling it. I'm particularly intrigued by writing that addresses the body—illness, ingestion, desire, display, sexual passion, subtle eroticism. The writers I most admire celebrate vulgarity and emotion, and, yes, even sarcasm. By engaging the body in their work, they explore desire, loss, human experience that's often hidden from view."

I've got some "blurbs":

"Like a magnifying glass over ants, Jones-Yelvington hones in on our everyday negotiations of damage and desire, of secrets lost and found and often destroyed by the sharing. Like those ants, his characters almost always get burned, but how brightly they blaze when it happens, and how much more of the world we can see in their glow." --Steve Himmer

"Tim Jones-Yelvington doesn't push the envelope. He kicks the shit out of it." --Roxane Gay

Any favorite authors? Books?

Dennis Cooper, Nicholas Montemarano, Rebecca Brown, Sam D'Allesandro, Kevin Killian, James St. James, Daniel Allen Cox, Derek McCormack, Kyle Minor, Mary Miller, Italo Calvino, Arundhati Roy, Rikki Ducornet, Jeanette Winterson, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Amy Hempel, Samuel Delaney, Matthew Stadler, Kuzhali Manickavel, Marcel Proust & many and eclectic others.