Step right up and meet the latest proud addition to the Type Eighteen Books family. Welcome, T.I.M.!

T.I.M. Wirkus (they/them) is the author of the novels The Infinite Future (Penguin Press, 2018) and City of Brick and Shadow (Tyrus Books, 2014), which was a finalist for the Shamus Award and the winner of the Association for Mormon Letters Best Novel Award. Their novella, Sandy Downs, won the 2013 Quarterly West novella contest. Their short fiction has appeared in The Best American Non-Required Reading, Subtropics, Emerald City Review, and elsewhere. They hold a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Southern California.

Soon, we’ll tell you more about T.I.M.’s third novel, which we’ll publish in 2026. What we can tell you now is that their first two novels have been praised by renowned authors such as Eden Lepucki, Paul Tremblay, and Pulitzer-Prize winner Percival Everett. T.I.M.’s writing has been described by reviewers as “brilliant,” “astonishing,” “deeply moving,” “smart,” and many more flattering adjectives, but what all would agree on is T.I.M.’s ability to surprise and entertain, to pose questions and present puzzles, and most of all, to take readers on an unforgettable journey. We can’t wait to tell you more about the upcoming novel, but for now, get to know our latest author a little.

Who are some of your favorite authors, and why?

Some of my favorites these days are Lina Wolff, S.A. Cosby, Alicia Thompson, Tananarive Due, Kelly Link, Kristen Arnett, Mariana Enriquez, and Percival Everett, all writers who skillfully blend the sensational with the emotionally real. I love books that are scary or funny or thrilling or swoony or bizarre, as long as there’s something recognizably human at the core. (Or something strange and inhuman, if that’s what they’re going for.)

When did you know you were a writer?

I remember when I figured out how to write my first novel. I was on one of those touristy harbor cruises on Puget Sound, and the tour guide was phenomenal, not flashy or over the top, just really, really interesting. I was totally captivated, and it got me thinking about the way the narrator of a novel (whether first, second, or third person) works the same way a good tour guide does, both drawing the reader’s attention to points of interest, and making those points actually interesting. Writing a novel (especially a first novel) is super overwhelming (in my experience, anyway), and the tour guide metaphor was a way in for me, a way to (just barely) navigate the chaos.

Where were you born? Do you think the places of our lives inform our writing?

My writing has definitely been informed by where I’m from. I was born and raised in Utah, a state with a real mythos around it in the popular imagination, and it’s always fascinated me how that mythos does and doesn’t align with the Utah I’ve experienced. That’s a dynamic I love to explore as a writer, both with Utah and other subjects: the interplay between the legends and the lived experiences of a place or an identity.

Where would you vacation—city, country, beach, or mountains?

I’m afraid of the ocean, I get altitude sickness in the mountains, and I’m also afraid of the country, so for me it’s cities, both by process of elimination and by choice.

What do you think is the most important part of storytelling?

I always misremember Elmore Leonard’s tenth rule of writing (“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip”) as “Just write the interesting parts,” which is probably the closest thing I have to a philosophy of writing. I think some might take that edict to mean that you should write in the same relatively plot-forward way that Leonard himself does, but I read it as an injunction to leave out the parts (either moments or stylistic moves) that don’t interest you, and focus on what does capture your imagination, whether that results in a terse, action-packed novella, or a multivolume remembrance of things past.

Read more about our newest author at www.timwirkus.com/