Reader Meet Author: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Today we will hear from one of the bigger personalties in Chicago who is finally beginning to break through and have his writing recognized on a bigger stage. His stories have appeared in many publications and his collection Evan's House and the Other Boys who Live There will be released by Rose Metal Press next year. He maintains a blog, contributes to Big Other, and recently launched a reading series. His stories are compelling, relevant, and always entertaining, but it is clear that Tim values the performance of reading and may be at the forefront of redefining the live reading in Chicago. Even though few writers treat it as such, the idea that a live reading is a performance is not a new one. However, Tim takes it to another level with his costumes and sequins, and as you find words like "burlesque performance" and "fire-breathers" he has plans to take much further.

It is my pleasure to bring you an in depth interview with Tim Jones-Yelvington.

Orange Alert (OA): You have been dubbed the "Lady Gaga of the Chicago lit", what do you think that means?
Tim Jones-Yelvington (TJ): This kind-of started as a joke. I wanted to make posters for future readings (I haven't had time to do this yet, but it is still a long-term goal) with a big bright picture of me in my glammed-out makeup, and I wanted to include a pithy quote that might grab the attention of random folks on the street who might not normally be inclined to attend a reading. I actually solicited Mary Hamilton's blurb ("Tim Jones-Yelvington is the Lady Gaga of the Chicago lit scene) myself, and it's since caught on with some of my other "lit scene" friends. It kinda cracks me up. I enjoy Gaga's fashion and some of her more disruptive and performative aspects. My interest in glam and fashion and surface-level stuff is in one way very old -- I've always loved wearing costumes, and when I was six years old, was really into Jem and the Holograms and wanted to be a rock star when I grew up -- and in another, very new -- I was into really earnest and often depressive music and culture for a number of years in high school and college. I've been fairly involved with supporting social justice movements that sometimes (but not always) have a vexed relationship with fashion and stuff deemed superficial. I'm 27 and I'd barely touched makeup before last October. But now I kinda can't get enough. In addition to the "Lady Gaga of the Chicago lit scene," I've been called the "Johnny Weir of creative writing" by Andrea Kneeland from Hobart, Tadd Adcox from Artifice compared me to Ziggy Stardust and a random kid at a bar told me I reminded him of Patrick Wolf -- which I took as a serious compliment, because Patrick Wolf is way hipper than most of those other folks, and also a seriously talented musician and composer.

OA: Do you ever fear that persona or performance might over shadow the quality work you are putting out?
TJ: It's a worry, and one I've discussed extensively with some friends and with my partner. My hope is that the outfits draw initial attention, but the writing (and its delivery) keeps people listening. While there is rarely a direct relationship between what I wear and what I read, I believe the two are interrelated in the broader sense in terms of my being interested in the relationship between surface, artifice, the performative and interiority, emotionality, stuff beneath. I'm interested in transgressive lit, which as I understand it seeks to produce a certain affective experience through an initial shock, as well as Sontag's notion of camp, which I think is a different sensibility than the transgressive, which seeks to make a mockery of very serious things, including time-honored traditions and institutions, while taking very seriously things usually considered superficial or silly. I think the outfits maybe help facilitate these interests -- but truth be told, these are justifications I've worked out retroactively. When I first started gluing sequins to my face, I just wanted to be a rock star. I like Kate Durbin's quote, "A reading is a performance whether we like it or not. We're standing up there and performing so why not see it as a performance in the the way a rock star does. They always wear the costumes." Going forward, I am trying to think about how I can push the relationship between my writing and costumes to the next level so that both remain vital, which might include some further exploration of the relationship between the texts and attire. I loathe the idea of what I wear literally or directly representing anything from my text, but I feel like there might be other, more oblique ways to connect the two. In general, I want to find ways to make readings more entertaining, more performative, perhaps even more cross-disciplinary, but without sacrificing their distinctiveness as readings -- I don't want my readings to become performance art (nothing against performance art), which is why I've committed to never memorizing anything, I always want to hold in my hand a physical reminder that what I'm delivering is derived from text. How can or should I be more performative while still literally reading? This is not a rhetorical question -- if anybody has cool ideas, I hope they'll send them my way.

OA: Evan's House and the Other Boys who Live There is coming out next year from Rose Metal Press. How did it end up with Rose Metal and what are your thoughts on working with Kathleen and the crew?
TJ: I ended up with Rose Metal because I was a finalist for this year's chapbook competition. "Evan's House" will appear in a multi-author volume with the other three finalists -- Elizabeth Colen, John Jodzio and Mary Miller -- as well as a reprint of Sean Lovelace's excellent "How Some People Like Their Eggs." I'm not sure why Rose Metal decided to produce this volume, as opposed to other years when they haven't produced such a volume, but I have read all five chapbooks and will say I think they work really beautifully together -- they present five distinctive voices while also really cohering nicely, presenting some continuity as a whole. I think Rose Metal is really the creme de la creme or the Cadillac (or some other cliche I'm feeling too lazy not to use) of very short fiction publishers. Their books are beautiful and I feel honored to be a part of one. I haven't had the chance to work with Kathleen and Abby much yet, but am a big fan of Kathleen's writing and have really enjoyed getting to know her locally at readings and social events and such. I got to meet Abby in Denver at AWP and she seems great. Their flash fiction panel at AWP was one of the best organized and executed panels I attended. They often (but not always) send emails from the Rose Metal address as a unit, so that you are not 100% sure who wrote what, which I think is interesting in light of statements Kathleen has made about the process she uses to write collaborative poetry with Elissa Gabbert, how they tend to forget who wrote which lines, which I find really fascinating, I love hearing Kathleen talk/write about collaboration. I would love to do some kind of awesome multi-sensory, multidisciplinary reading or "happening" in Chicago when the chapbook collective comes out next Spring, but I'm not sure what I want this to look like yet.

OA: You recently launched a new reading series in Chicago called Un-Called For with Megan Milks. How is the series going and what do you have planned for it?
TJ: The series is going well. We've featured some excellent writers and I think have also put together interesting combinations of writers for each reading. Going forward, I'd like to find additional ways to play with the format of the series -- how do we "queer" what we even think of as a reading? All of the same stuff I've talked about with relation to my own readings -- performative, entertaining, cross-disciplinary, etc. I think we've got some ongoing series in Chicago -- like Quickies or the Sunday Night Sex Show -- that do an excellent job remaining engaging for non-writers and never being boring. I hope we can be the same, while also presenting complex and challenging content. One of my favorite writers, Daniel Allen Cox, is planning to come through town in October on his book tour, and if everything works out logistically, Uncalled For will hopefully be the Chicago stop on his tour. I want to make his more of an "event" reading -- his new novel involves Pink Floyd-loving pyromaniacs from the Polish Queer underground, so I'm hoping to combine his reading with a burlesque performance that may involve fire-breathers. And he has also promised to perform a five-song Pink Floyd set if I secure him an acoustic guitar. I probably shouldn't be talking about this yet since there's so many details to iron out to ensure it actually happens, but I wanted to provide some more concrete examples of the kind of thing I hope to do.

OA: What are your thoughts on the Chicago literary scene right now?
TJ: My experience at AWP in Denver really reinforced for me how awesome our community is -- how many great writers and small press publishers and literary magazines and reading series we've got -- but also how much we support one another and how much fun we have (ask around about Featherproof's lactilicious presentation at Another Chicago Magazine and Make Magazine's "Make me Another After Party.") Folks who have been around Chicago's "scene" longer than me tell me it's really flourished in the last year or two. I'm excited about Another Chicago Magazine's forthcoming all-Chicago issue, which I think has the potential to really document this amazing cultural moment in our city. I think one thing we need to remain conscious of moving forward, in addition to promoting Chicago's total domination over everything ever, is making sure Chicago's lit community remains broad-based and accessible. I think this is something Orange Alert has always prioritized -- it seems to me you use a wide range of writers for your readings, which I really respect. I feel like the particular small press/indie lit community I'm a part of in Chicago is fairly collegial and inviting, but also very young and very white and not at all representative of our city's demographics. We absolutely cannot say strong writers of color do not live and write in Chicago, and there are great projects, organizations and reading series like Proyecto Latina and Guild Complex that regularly highlight literature by writers of color. I think we can begin to think about how we interface with some of these folks.

OA: What's next for Tim Jones-Yelvington?
TJ: I had a reading almost every weekend from late December through AWP in Denver, and now have none scheduled in the immediate future, so I keep joking about how I'm "headed back to the studio to cut some new tracks." I am in all seriousness devoting some significant time and psychological space to writing new work and also revising some larger projects that have been sitting around for several months unfinished and marked up with feedback. This is also my busiest time of the year at the foundation I work for, and I won't really have time to breathe there until our fiscal year ends on June 30. I'm hoping to line up some readings for the fall and finally make that poster I keep talking about. I am also editing the October online issue of Pank magazine as a Queer prose and poetry issue. I am really excited by the quality of submissions we've received thus far and think it's going to be badass. Submissions will be open through September, so spread the word.

Bonus Questions:

OA: What type of music do you listen to and who are a few of your favorites?
TJ: I used to listen primarily to a lot of eccentric women songwriters in the lineage of Laura Nyro and Kate Bush -- and these folks are still important to me, but during the last year, I've found myself gravitating toward a lot more dance-pop, soul, R & B and house. Kid Sister's "Ultraviolet" is by far my most-played album of the year. She draws upon a lot of classic Chicago house sounds, which is a genre and era I've been listening to a lot lately -- anything with "jack" in the title, ha. I'm really fascinated by the cultural history of house, how it emerged right here in Chicago from social spaces occupied by people of color and Queer folks, and how Queer people of color in particular played a critical role as architects of its sound. I've been taking hip hop/funk/house dance classes for the past several months with a really awesome Chicago choreographer/teacher/dancer named Boogie McClarin, who really focuses on the social and spiritual aspects of urban dance. This maybe sounds corny, but I think it's changed how I hear music -- I think I hear it in my body more than I did previously, and I think I also listen more for the rhythms inside of rhythms -- how two songs can both be in common time, but "the beat" can mean something very different.

You can find out more about Tim at his blog and don't forget to read his contributions over at Big Other.

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