Tim Carmichael
Bio
I am an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. I write about rural life, family, and the places I grew up around. My poetry and essays have appeared in Beautiful and Brutal Things, My latest book. Check it out on Amazon
Achievements (16)
Stories (242)
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The Solitude and the Discipline of Poet Sylvia Plath
People have looked at Sylvia Plath in a warped way for a long time. More often than not, she’s seen as a tragic figure instead of as a serious author. For decades, popular imagination has stuck to the image of the suicidal, confessional poet, pouring her pain onto the page. But if you dig into the archives, her drafts, her letters, lecture notes, her marked-up books, a different picture starts to form. What you see is a sharp, self-driven writer who knew that imagination alone wasn’t enough. She understood that inspiration comes when habit and intellect meet. If you go to the Lilly Library at Indiana University, where her calendars and notebooks are stored, you don’t find chaos. You find a careful, professional writer.
By Tim Carmichael9 months ago in History
The True Story of Sam. Runner-Up in You Were Never Really Here Challenge.
I met him the summer I turned seven. Down by the creek where I used to play on my grandparent's farm. He waited behind the toolshed. He told me his name was Sam, and he told me that like he wasn’t sure it still was.
By Tim Carmichael9 months ago in Fiction
The True Story and Double Life of Billy Tipton. Top Story - June 2025.
When Billy Tipton died, the world finally noticed him—but not for his music. It was January 1989, in Spokane, Washington. Billy collapsed in the small home where he'd quietly raised a family. Paramedics arrived too late. He was 74. A jazz musician, semi-retired, father to three adopted sons, partner to a woman named Kitty. To anyone who knew him—really knew him—he was a gentle, private man who had lived a decent, ordinary life. The kind of man who made spaghetti from scratch, taught his boys to balance a checkbook, and still tinkered on the piano at night.
By Tim Carmichael10 months ago in Pride
The Locked Drawer of Emily Dickinson
For as long as I’ve been writing, Emily Dickinson has been a guiding star. Her clipped intensity, her fierce quiet, her way of saying what others circle around—I’ve spent years trying to write like that, trying to listen the way she must have listened. So, the story of how her poems nearly vanished before the world ever saw them has always struck me as not just literary history, but personal.
By Tim Carmichael10 months ago in Fiction
