‘Each essay is a tiny vessel exploring the mosaic of my experience…’
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.
Left, Tyler Dempsey with his two dogs (husky Ally and Labrador mix Wilt). Right, the cover of his new essay collection, Denali, Alaska, now available from Trident.
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.
Remembering Missouri writer Jack Conroy, instigator of the proletarian writer movement of the Great Depression
Who could imagine, in these times, that my beloved deep-red home state of Missouri once harbored one of the leaders of a radical, left-wing literary movement that gave rise to some of the late twentieth century’s most acclaimed writers?
In the heart of Little Dixie, a self-taught writer’s words took him from the rubble and rabble of Monkey Nest, a coal mining village just outside my hometown of Moberly, Missouri, to literary fame during the Great Depression. Jack Conroy‘s novel about the working class, called The Disinherited, took him to the pinnacle, but too quickly he fell into neglected writer status. Too independent for Communist Party orthodoxy, Conroy butted heads with what he called the “New York intelligentsia,” and eventually his brand of Heartland socialism fell out of favor. I hope my recent essay about Conroy will help raise awareness of his crucial role in creating an important literary movement in America.
I was acquainted with Keith and his work from social media, but since the publication of Bad Intentions, I’ve dug into much more of his phenomenal writing. Following a 40-plus-year career as a newspaper journalist that started when he was in high school, Keith turned to the world of fiction writing in 2019. That background no doubt contributes to his talents as a fiction writer, and his experience as a crime reporter provided him with ample training as a writer of crime fiction.
He’s the author of two mystery/crime novels: That October, a 1980s-era coming-of-age novel published in 2025, and Seven Angels, published this summer, about a young woman who returns to her hometown to run the family funeral home business and discovers how much it’s changed–for the worse. He’s also the co-author of the true crime book The Westside Park Murders: Muncie’s Most Notorious Cold Case, which, as he notes in a recent blog post, continues to attract attention five years after publication. He’s a regular contributor to the crime/mystery/thriller hub CrimeReads, and has had short stories published widely, including as part of a new anthology, Daydream Believer: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of the Monkees! from Shotgun Honey Books.
Like others of his vintage (including me), Keith grew up in the golden age of Baby Boomer/Generation Jones pop culture, the pre-internet era of 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s TV, movies, comics books, and music. His interest in horror movies and magazines, true crime, haunted houses, and other strange phenomena heavily influence his writing.
As we enter spooky season, it seems fitting to feature Keith in this venue. Read on to learn more about his writing origins, influences, and projects.
Here are links to five bits of writing that recently captured my attention. They all have something to do with writing. Maybe you’ll get something out of one or two of them. Happy reading.
The Paris Review on discovering new writers. One of the legendary and upper-echelon literary magazines, The Paris Review, opened for submissions yesterday (Thursday, October 1), and to mark the occasion–and perhaps to encourage unknown writers–Owen Park, the magazine’s assistant editor, wrote about “the journey a piece can take from the slush pile into our pages.” From this piece, I learned that Philip Roth was among the literary luminaries who once submitted unsolicited manuscripts to this august publication. Others have also found their way into The Paris Review, as Park reports.
Why I’ve Stopped Submitting My Stories to Literary Magazines is an essay by writer Mary Felice, who describes herself as “a novelist at heart” and who posted this not in any literary magazine but on her Substack page, which is appropriate, given the subject and the nature of Substack. In the piece, she points out that literary magazines usually don’t pay, that it takes a lot of time and effort to submit, that it won’t advance her literary goals, etc. It’s worth a read, even if you don’t agree with everything she has to say.
Remembering Annie Dillard. The New York Times Magazine‘s Same Anderson writes (gift link) that Dillard, the brilliant memoirist, essayist, and novelist who died last month, was “a sort of drill sergeant of human consciousness: determined, always, to force herself, and others, to see.”
Running the writer’s race. In “This Side of the Finish Line,” writer Nancy Jorgenson discusses her ambitious goal of writing 52 essays this year in the form of an athlete’s mid-year progress report to a fictitious coach. The result is an enjoyable and insightful essay that even less ambitious writers (like myself) can relate to.
Farewell to another fine and beloved literary magazine.The Argyle Literary Magazine‘s final issue dropped at the end of September. Another fine literary magazine, and home to three pieces of my writing, is going away. The editors plan to go permanently offline December 15, so read the final issue soon! While you’re there, visit the archives for many splendid works of art, prose, and poetry.
‘As soon as I decided to just be exactly me, and stop playing other people’s games, this whole sea parted.’
I rarely get the chance to meet, in person, a writer I know only through social media. Beyond the occasional local poetry reading, I don’t get to many literary events.
So when I found out that one of those writers I’ve known only through Twitter/X, Scott Laudati, would be doing a poetry reading at the Osage Arts Community in nearby Belle, Missouri, I made plans to be there. Scott was on the road, as he often is, and in the middle of a multi-state tour to read from his latest poetry collection, Rainbow Road, which I’d read over the summer, along with his 2022 semi-autobiographical novel Play the Devil.
Me exchanging books with Scott Laudati in Belle, Missouri, prior to Scott’s reading at Osage Arts Community, August 2026.
Scott’s a child of the working class, New Jersey born, and those roots come through in his writing, especially in Play the Devil, a tale of a mid-twenties college dropout who returns to his hometown, works a summer as a pool boy, and attempts to discover a lost love while discovering himself along the way. Although it takes place in one section of the country, it’s as much a journey as the road trip saga that is Rainbow Road.
That Scott would include Belle, population 1,381, on his itinerary of travels–which took him from Brooklyn to Connecticut, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Detroit, Philadelphia, and elsewhere–should not surprise anyone who knows much about him or follows him on social media. He’s a true literary road warrior who has more wanderlust than a dozen Jack Kerouacs. He seems to be born for the road, and he revels in discovering out-of-the-way places and what they say about the overall American experience.
Scott documents his travels not only through poetry, but also via the medium of video. On his YouTube channel, you can find great videos of several ghost towns he visited earlier this year along old Route 66, the Mother Road, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026.
When he isn’t tramping around the country, experiencing and celebrating the country like a 21st century Walt Whitman, he also fronts a band known as Camp Winapooka, which released an EP, Capture the Flag!, earlier this year. Scott sometimes performs solo at his poetry readings. Here’s the band’s official Rainbow Road music video.
Oh, and did I mention that Scott is also an artist? This fall, he will be back in Belle to exhibit some of his paintings. So if you’re in the area, stop by!
In today’s Friday Five, Scott talks about his many creative interests, early influences, life on the road, and treading water while on mushrooms.
So buckle in. We’re going for a helluva ride.
1. You are a man of many artistic interests: a poet, a novelist, an artist, a musician, a filmmaker, a pizza connoisseur, and probably many other things I’ve failed to mention here. How do you describe yourself, artistically speaking?
I was a boy that felt like I had something to prove. My dad was my enemy growing up and I can’t say I had any real friends. So I always thought there was something wrong with me–I was ugly, or dumb, or just generally repulsive to everyone else who seemed to have it very easy. Art was the thing I realized I could hide behind. I didn’t have to be appealing on the outside or try and be a different person, I could let the work speak for itself. So I became a psycho about it, diving into every medium with a ton of discipline because every day that I got better was a day further from this exterior I was born with, and I trusted that if I kept working at it eventually I’d be a person of value. I guess I’d describe myself as a bro with a great head of hair.
2. How did you first become interested in writing, and why have you pursued poetry so intensely?
I was grounded every day growing up so I read a ton of books. The first book I remember something sparking was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. I felt just as lonely and scared as the main character but I also knew I was brave like him, too. That’s when I realized I could channel what I was feeling into characters that didn’t have to be me, but I could write pieces of myself into them.
Poetry wasn’t something I took very seriously at first and I really had no foundation at all. I didn’t know living people were still writing poetry until I started sending mine out to get published. I always saw myself as a novelist but now I really think the power is in poetry. I love coming up with these kinds of mini campfire stories to tell about the life I’ve lived and my friends have lived and all these highways we’ve driven through night after night, between cities and states most people will never see. And it’s so much easier to get people to read a poem than a novel.
3. Your latest collection of poetry, Rainbow Road, is phenomenal. What inspired you to create this book?
Mushrooms. I was opening pools this spring and I was unbearably depressed because somehow no matter how many unions I join or girls I fall in love with I end up back in New Jersey every 3 years cleaning pools. It’s like a nightmare you think you’ve woken up from and then something insane happens and you realize you’re stuck in sleep paralysis and the only way out is death. And I was so sick of playing games with publishers, and which publisher was really hot right now and whichever one had been last year was totally irrelevant now. And none of them do anything for you anyway except posting about your book twice on their instagrams. So I was really ready to throw in the towel.
One of the owners of a pool we opened gave us a whole bunch of mushroom chocolate bars as a tip. I went home and thought, “Well, I hate my life anyway, I might as well eat all these mushrooms.” And can I tell you, I had the most beautiful 12 hours, treading water in my parents’ pool, rolling around in the lawn with the dogs, and I realized that no one could write like me and I couldn’t write like anyone else, and I had a story to tell about dragging my flag from one end of this country to the other that no one else could tell, so before I quit I knew I needed to get this last batch of poems out, and I decided to give this thing one more go, and it’s been incredible. The response has been great. I’ve met so many amazing people. As soon as I decided to just be exactly me, and stop playing other people’s games, this whole sea parted. It’s a lesson I learned early, and I almost forgot, and it basically killed me creatively. But it saved me too. I’ll fight to the death for my art; I feel like I have. No one else is going to do that for you.
4. Music is an obvious influence on your creative life, as evidenced by the title of Rainbow Road (Kris Kristofferson) and your publishing house, Bone Machine (a Tom Waits reference). Who are some of your other influences, either from the world of music or writing or filmmaking, or other fields? Please narrow to three or four, with a brief explanation of why they influence you.
This is going to sound so stupid but Green Day is the most important thing that ever happened to my life. I went to Catholic school and never really heard any music until my neighbor, Philip, a Jewish kid who went to public school invited me over in third grade. I went to his house and he played me Kerplunk by Green Day and it was like a nuclear bomb going off in my soul. It was really like a person who’d lived in a cave their whole life suddenly being handed a slice of the best pizza. It changed the whole game. After that everything was boring. I’d been handed the Rosetta Stone of a different Universe. And it set the rest of my life in motion.
That’s the only important influence. Everyone else steered me lyrically, or expanded on my consciousness, but Green Day was the revolution. My whole life, for good or bad, was just a result of that day in Philip’s bedroom.
5. What is the most challenging aspect of the road warrior artist’s lifestyle?
Going home. The road is the only way to live in “the now.” All you have to do is soak in a new city, sell yourself to the audience, and then hang out with a bunch of cool people after the show. You haven’t eaten, you haven’t slept, you’ve been hungover every day for a month. It’s the best. Going home is hard. Once you’ve gone feral it’s impossible to become a citizen again. You’re just looking for the next way out.
BONUS QUESTION: Your final poem in Rainbow Road, “Outer Sunset,” is a heartbreakingly beautiful piece that end with the lines “The last poem I’ll ever write/never to begin again.” Should we readers take this statement literally? Is this truly the end of the road for Scott Laudati the poet? If so (or if not), what comes next? (Okay, that’s three questions. Sorry.)
I think I’ve said everything I have to say. I think I said it all in my first book and I’ve just been rewriting the same poem for almost two decades. Men used to go out to sea when they felt like this. I found a church in Rich Fountain, Missouri, that called me up the mountain to its altar. I’m not sure what it means but I think I will soon.
