Don’t let the title of Tyler Dempsey’s latest book, Denali, Alaska, fool you. That may sound like the name of a travelogue or guidebook, but this collection of essays, now out from Trident, is as expansive as the state he called home for more than a decade.
Yes, there are plenty of first-person accounts of Tyler’s adventures in the wilds of The Last Frontier, including a stint as a backpacking guide for a Belgian film crew to the site of a famously doomed American adventurer (the subject of the book’s penultimate essay). But each of these essays, like the author himself, covers a lot of territory, from life in Alaska (“the size of two Texases,” Tyler reminds us) to banana farms in Hawaii, hitchhiking in Montana, leaving his native Oklahoma, and hanging out in the Bay Area of California, “trimming friends’ marijuana for supplemental income.” From these and other geographical jumping-off points, Tyler takes us on a journey about family, love, sex, physics, Native American rock writings, ultramarathoning into the hottest places of the U.S., close encounters with bears, and many and sundry internet rabbit holes that have piqued his curiosity over the years.
What makes each of these fifteen essays so interesting and enjoyable is the way Tyler deftly connects seemingly unrelated ideas and weave them into a cohesive fabric. His nonlinear, hopscotch lateral thinking style shines through in every essay. As he writes in “Stop Making Sense,” he is “plagued by ideas.” His mind is like “a drunk toddler grabbing flash cards. … Though I may not understand it when I begin, something is connecting the disparate strands.”
The result, as he puts it in the interview below, is a set of essays, each of which “is a tiny vessel exploring the mosaic of my experience, sticking to one thing for a few seconds before moving away to see what jumps up from the goo next.”
An adventurous soul who has endured some of the most extreme climates and conditions in North America, Tyler is also the product of a single-parent household and some of the common and not-so-common realities such a life brings, and he and his wife are new parents. He’s also Blake Shelton’s stepbrother, a tidbit some writers (like myself) might latch on to as fodder for an essay all its own. But that factoid barely merits a mention in Denali, Alaska. Tyler simply has too many other interesting things to say.
Denali, Alaska is Tyler’s fifth book and first essay collection. Many of the pieces were previously published in popular alt-lit magazines over the past few years. You can find all his books on his website, as well as some of his essays and other writings. Until this year, he also hosted a podcast called “Another Fucking Writing Podcast” (archived on his website) and for six years published an annual roundup of his favorite short stories.
Tyler now lives in a small town in Northern Arizona with his family.
Read on to learn more about Denali, Alaska, why Tyler stepped away from his podcast, why he prefers to write nonfiction, and more.
1. Why did you decide to create this essay collection?
I died in 2022, basically. The end of an era/self. Packed my belongings, drove out of Denali, Alaska. Bound for The Lower 48, lured by year-round work.
I’d had enough shoveling fucking snow, needing to plug my car in to keep the oil from congealing, and a community I’d obviously been seeing through a distorted mirror for 13 years.
I loved the place. But it didn’t love me.
A “life” wasn’t possible. No matter how much energy I tossed into it. And, like most doomed romances, it haunted me. I settled into day-to-day in the southwestern deserts. But my mind was on the northern lights.
That was 2022. In 2023, I started, “Another Fucking Writing Podcast.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it? For the first couple years, every episode started with an intro. Nothing fancy. Whatever was on my mind when I sat down. But it felt like something was getting revealed. How my mind—or maybe, any mind—works. Plus, it was fun. And people kept reaching out. It seemed more than the interviews themselves; I’d get feedback on my intros. I thought, These stupid things?
I can’t remember if I thought of it, or one of the emails was the first to point out: the intros were essays. Or, they could be. Like, there was exploration, plumbing going on, scratching the same brain itch a good essay gets at.
So, I started writing. And they allowed me to feel the things I needed to finally walk away from Alaska.
And much like a good train of thought, one led to another. And another.
And, pretty soon, I learned I was going to be a dad. And knew the life I’d led until then was ending.
Another death.
So, to answer your question, I wanted to build a little headstone while there was still time. Something tangible, reminding me who I was once, that I could look at and go, Yep, that really happened.
2. What do you hope readers will take away from these essays?
I didn’t put much thought to it.
I know they tell you, write toward your audience. And there’s a feeling in the West that art should do something. But I’d published Indie enough to know very, very few people are going to read it. (Thank you, by the way.)
Each essay is a tiny vessel exploring the mosaic of my experience, sticking to one thing for a few seconds before moving away to see what jumps up from the goo next.
I guess, I hope the people who try to engage with it are entertained. And maybe think, I wanna be friends with this guy. Or maybe, I could write something like—or even better than—this.
3. In addition to Denali, Alaska, you’ve written a collection of poetry, a collection of short stories, and novels. Which form of writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) is your favorite, and why?
Poetry’s cool. What matters are feelings. Like music. What’s said is less important than how, and when, it’s said.
When I came to art, my feelings needed a house. Now, I have a baby. And dude’s full of all these foreign and unintelligible feelings.
I was like that. Still am.
To know what strings are pulling me around, I had to notice them. And, to do that, I had to see someone else’s first. Then mine could vibrate and harmonize.
You know those gadgets? [The Rube Goldberg machine.] Where a ball’s on a track. And there’s like a row of dominoes that fall, and the last one trips a door, dropping the ball into a Plinko-type board, etc., etc. All these complications so the ball getting from point A to point B is actually interesting. That’s what a novel is. Writing one’s getting that gadget in the mail. In a thousand pieces. With no instructions to assemble it.
Short stories are on a spectrum between the two. Some look like poetry. Others behave like novels.
But my absolute favorite is nonfiction.
Someone once said, “Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth.” Once you realize that, nonfiction opens up. It can go anywhere. Do anything. It isn’t on a track like fiction. Can do things with time fiction and poetry can’t.
Nonfiction just bumps into one thing after another. Like a life. It might start at point A and end in the exact same spot. But what you’re seeing at the end isn’t the same thing as in the beginning.
4. This year has seen you conclude a couple of long-running projects: your writing podcast and year-end roundup of your favorite short stories. Why did you decide to bring these projects to an end?
There’s a friend I keep thinking of. Who, one warm, clear night, in June of 2018, stopped his car on the side of the Interstate. It was around 3 a.m. Everything was quiet.
He walked against the flow of traffic. And, pretty soon, some poor trucker with his own problems, who wasn’t paying attention—after all, it was 3 a.m., with the long white line stretching to infinity—had a split-second of recognition before his 40-ton rig vaporized my friend.
Imagine: the headlights of a semi; two specks on the horizon, growing, till they consumed your vision. I keep thinking: what must that have felt like?
The sound. Metal, muscle. Vibrations transferring from the concrete through your bones and teeth.
I guess, what I’m saying, is sometimes you have to pull over the car you’ve been driving. You have to get out and face the unknown.
5. What’s your next creative project we can look forward to?
I’m putting creativity on the shelf, for now. Looking forward to raising my kid. Seeing what that adventure brings.
D.T. Robbins recently tweeted, “All you writers about to have kids, hope you’re ready for a 5-year hiatus.”
And, I think, that’s about right.
Follow Tyler Dempsey on Twitter/X at @tylercdempsey.
