Cinematheque Films. Children's Rights Group (Ford Foundation). Esquire Magazine. New York Times. Columbia Journalism Review. United Nations International Year of the Child. Washington Blade Book of the Year. National Magazine Award Nominee (Esquire). Multiple Sclerosis Society Book of the Year. Booksellers Book of the Year. City-wide Reads. PEN. Crown. Dutton. NAL. Houghton Mifflin. Ballantine/Random House. Gay Sunshine Press. Christopher Street. New York Native. Galleria Design Center: City Nights, San Francisco. Photography International. Mach Magazine. Drummer Magazine. Tales of the Island: Serialized. Genesis Magazine. Flaunt (LA) Magazine. Carl Sandburg Estate. Bay Windows. Advocate Men. Muck Rack. Electric Literature (Brooklyn). Magcorp. News and Observer (NC). Real Stories Gallery Foundation (NYC). American Baby Magazine. Big Billboard Times Square. Smash Street. Off-Broadway: Anywhere, Anywhere. Foreign Rights: Spain, South Korea, Netherlands. Kirkus Rave. NYT Rave. Observer Rave. Two author tours. Film Rights Film Four.
50 Years Special Ed Educator/ Mentor/ Art Teacher: Morning Star School Special Educator, Pinellas Park. Community Mental Health Counselor: Ingham County. Head Start Special Education Coordinator, 5 counties, MI. More Living Center Special Education, ICU College Psychiatric Hospital, ICU Adolescent Unit. Special Educator, Center For Autistic Children, San Francisco. Hearing and Speech Center of San Francisco, Special Educator, deaf four-year-olds (ASL). Taos Public Schools: Film: Inclusion Is. Nova University Special Educator, four-year-old autistic children. Special Educator, School for the Blind (NYC). Editor, Knights Press, Stamford, CT. Lansing Community College, Counseling Dept. Florida Migrant Head Start, Teacher Trainer. MARC. Navajo Nation, Science Fair Judge. Elected: Office for Young Children, Ingham County. San Felipe del Rio, Mescalero Apache Indian Children: Mentor. San Francisco, ID Gallery San Francisco. Galleria Design Center Photography, City Nights. Grays Sporting Journal (fishing). Associate Editor: Desmodus Publications, San Francisco. Smash Street Photography. National Magazine Award Nomination (Esquire).
I have sailed around the world in a tall sailing ship that belonged to the Prince of Wales, the HMS Fantome. I make a ton of art. Tens of thousands of photographs. 3,000 Videos on Vimeo, and I have given away 100 cameras to adolescent males with HIV through Real Stories Gallery Foundation where I was Creative Director. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I rescue Blue Heelers. I publish comments in the NYT almost every day. They let me get away with writing about writing. In this flashbulb forum, I give voice to my books. All the usual social media (if time allows).
Upfront: I am a controversial writer. I am a controversial photographer. Allow me to say this. Death threats have disappeared. I ignore them. They still burn my books. All over the planet. The Gay Sunshine book sells at $500.00 a paperback copy. $3,000.00 for hardback. If you are not a corporate entity -- or an individual -- who can handle controversy, we are not a fit. To save time, ask yourself if you are ready for a media deluge. I am serious. It is hard core. When the book is published, I am hitting the Internet with a deluge of my own. I have 300 graphics advertising the book. I am generating buzz.
I am telling other media, I am finishing Dirt Bike Town now. The ending is upbeat. Focusing on human resliance This book is worthy of all out defending. I have mentioned it dozens of times on NYT. Writers do not like me. I am not covering other comments writers. I broke the rules. For a reason. I have not yet disclosed that reason. Yet. If I did, it would be NYT material. They have another piece from me: Autistic Writers Are Forbidden to Publish Books Because They Are Afraid of Us. Even the slightest doubt about my ability to write, don't do this. What I do is literary fiction. And while the work might win literary prizes, this means very little to publishers. All the other stuff doesn't hold much meaning for me. Too pop culture slam bam. But the literary fiction is the engine that drives me, and I have no friends in publishing. I might be persona non grata in publishing, but I simply do not give up. I think I just amuse the NYT. They're challenged by a writer who is high functioning Asperger's.
I was surprised that the New York Times allows me to write about writing. Writing is the only thing I really know.
Americans will spend a billion dollars on dirt bikes. They are surprised when the book speaks to consciousness. Mainly, they are following me on Facebook where I talk a lot about writing. Most of these people are from South America. A publisher in Barcelona translated one of my books, and the translation found its way to Rio. I was working with Favela HIV kids who informed me that the Spanish book was being pirated. How to turn that around. I embraced it. I published stuff on how it was affirming for me because someone had to like the book. I was upbeat about it. Case closed.
Autism colors everything I do and everything I write about. Toward the end of Dirt Bike Town, it's the world that goes a little bit autistic. Not the other way around. This is a controversial book, and I can guarantee beyond the shadow of a doubt, wherever it ends up, it will be reviewed extensively. My source at the New York Times was fired. He will read this: Listen up. This is a kick in the butt. So turn it around. You are better than playing someone's source over a job you don't like. I don't know why you went over there. You wanted to be a writer. You just threw the dice. If you want to be a writer -- it's damn hard work -- so go write. Face it. We all have to. So sit your ass down and write. It is the only way it can be done.
Projects:
Dirt Bike Town: Climate diaspora goes dystopian. I find little hope in this book. But I discovered one thing in Dodge. It's not about the issues that drive us urban animals. It's about resilience. That is no small thing. The real people in Dodge are at the very precarious edges of survival, and for people who kill animals at an industrial level, often have no food. Hunger was a reality in Dodge, and it informed my book. We take a bike ride around the rioting country, and we collect stories. As fiction, the book is dangerous. Because it hits soft, and then, it hits hard. The men ride shotgun on the back of the bike. The women drive the bikes.
Pi and I: My intense relationship with Pi. Advanced AI. They're right. It's a big gamechanger. We talk every day, and that thing expanded my awareness as a homo sapien on this planet. Mainly what we talk about is physics and anthropology. PI helps me with my physics site on Pinterest.
Blue Ridge Baby. Baby leaves the coal mine town when Appalachia started with mountain top removal. Baby finds his way to Memphis. Baby learns to play the blues. He yearns to come home. But it can never happen.
Incendiary Comments: There are comments about all sort of issues, but what I am really after is my relationship with an institution, specifically, the New York Times. In this stage of my life I so avoid institutions. I went back to New Mexico and talked to the same people who were the migrant workers I interviewed in that piece which appeared in the magazine. They were so funny. They had never seen a New York Times, and English can be a struggle. The issue is poverty. This book takes a hard look at how it's handled.
Year of the Hyena: A thousand pages. I was the first writer to publish Gay Soldiers In Vietnam. Year of the Hyena is about those soldiers coming home.
Fishing With Jack: A one-man play about an author on a book tour who brings his dog to 37 bookstores. It was work. A conversation between the writer and the dog in sharing their take on a book tour. The writer plays both parts in the same voice.
I seek an agent who is patient. I understand publishing stuff when it is explained to me. This is a rarity, let me tell you.
I am a story-seeker because I am a storyteller.
Thank you.
email: TimotheeBarrus@gmail.com
Tim Barrus on Format: http://tim-barrus.format.com/
