Tim Weed's Blog

Peru: Ancient Cultures, Natural Wonders. April 8-19, 2026. As some of you may know, I have a long history with Peru (scroll down for photos from some of my travel there in the early aughts) and have been planning a friends’ trip back to the country in collaboration with my friend and fellow Middlebury graduate, distinguished documentary filmmaker Amy Bucher.  It’s going to be an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience! We’ll be running the trip in collaboration with the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC): here’s a link with all the details. The deposit date is coming right up on November 7, 2025. There are still a few openings, but don’t wait too long to register. We very much hope you can join us!

Oaxaca Writers’ Workshop. November 14-21, 2026. I can’t wait to return to the enchanting valley of Oaxaca! This writing workshop will feature plenty off-the-beaten track exploration of the area’s amazing artistic, archaeological, natural, and gustatory riches, and we’ll have parallel activities during the daily writing workshop for non-writer friends and significant others, such as hands-on cooking and/or Spanish classes. Stay tuned for more on this, and if you’re already interested, please send me a note and I’ll put you on the list to receive further details as they come out.

Inca Stonework

Scroll down to see some photos from my early travels to Peru, when I became especially fascinated by the spectacular ways the Inca had of working with sculpted stone. It’s really quite amazing and speaks of a relationship between nature, spirituality, and architecture that I don’t think we’ve come close to fully appreciating in our own culture. We’ll be exploring these Sacred Valley sites and many more in April 2026!

This 59 minute interview with the delightful Addie Thompson of Where the Climate Things Are was so much fun! We talk about, among other things:

Growing up between Vermont and Denver and discovering a love of winter and skiing

How fly fishing — in various locations throughout the US, including Addie’s favorite, Kennebago Lake — became a lifelong practice

Trip leading, group dynamics, and what time in the wilderness reveals about human connection

Why geological time, mass extinctions, and perspective can help with climate anxiety

The role of fiction in shifting climate paradigms and building new climate mythologies

Click here to watch the whole interview

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“WESTMINSTER — Local author Tim Weed’s fascinating new book, “The Afterlife Project” is a work of speculative fiction that features a post-apocalyptic sea voyage on a vintage sailing yacht, lovers separated by 10,000 years of time, and pervasive dangers both physical and psychological.

The novel bounces between two time periods — one 40 years in the future, when the human species faces imminent extinction because of climate disaster and infertility, and another 10 millenniums ahead, when the Earth, having “recovered” from the destructive forces of human civilization and the total collapse of its infrastructures, is once again teeming with abundant wildlife and natural beauty.

So it was with some irony that, when I drove to within a mile of Weed’s home in the rolling hills north of Putney to interview him before his appearance this Friday at the Brattleboro Literary Festival, I was stopped dead in my tracks by power lines that had fallen across the dirt road just minutes before, apparently knocked down by a heavy gust of wind.

“Maybe nature is trying to tell you something,” Weed laughed when I later contacted him by phone. In any event, he graciously agreed to reschedule the interview for the next day, and the following is a record of our conversation.” Read the rest here.

Another in a series of highly enjoyable radio and podcast appearances in the aftermath of the publication of The Afterlife Project!

This thirty minute conversation with fellow novelist DelSheree Gladden on KSJE radio in Farmington, New Mexico will be especially interesting to writers, I think. Topics include climate fiction, the depth and complexity of fictional characters, the creative and research origins of The Afterlife Project, the bracing challenge of writing fiction that comes alive on the page while also getting at a deeper truth, balancing scientific research with story elements, Hemingway’s iceberg theory of fiction, revision as re-inhabiting stories like a vivid dream, the challenges and joys of teaching fiction, the power of literature, and the impact of stories on human affairs, the value of experiencing dark alternative futures, the enduring appeal of novels, and more. Listen here.

I LOVED this conversation with The Inner Game‘s Gwen Garcelon about THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT, spiritual evolution, animism, and the need for a new mythology to help us fulfill our destiny as a species to become the stewards rather than the exploiters of sacred nature. Listen to our 28 minute interview here – you won’t regret it! Also available on NPR podcasts.

Such an honor to see this essay published at The Revelator, a beautiful and well-edited publication of the Center for Biological Diversity. I’ve been working on these ideas for quite some time; the essay gets at some ground truths for me about trees in fiction and also in the real world. I hope you enjoy it! Here’s a quick excerpt, and the full essay is here.

“Tolkien’s forests, similarly — where many of his most dramatic and evocative chapters take place — are gripping embodiments of this urgent wrestling match between darkness and light. The Old Forest, just beyond the borders of the bucolic Shire, is host not only to terrifying ring-wraiths but to uncanny and sometimes ravenously hostile ancient trees — and things get even worse in Mirkwood. But amid these forests of terror and danger there are also glades of joyous poetry and light, such as the alluring waystation of Rivendell and magical Lothlórien, where the cathedral-like spaces between the trees are filled with dappled golden light and the celestial music of elves.”

Just getting back from the inspiring whirlwind of The Afterlife Project book tour and almost missed a few things:

The Burlington Free Press featured The Afterlife Project in their “Summer Reading Guide of Books By Vermonters.” Needless to say, it’s an honor to be included!

Also an honor, and a conversation I very much enjoyed having, is this interview with Andrea Caswell, editor of the well-known Philadelphia-based literary magazine, Cleaver.

We discuss climate fiction, deep time, research, the novelist as archaeologist, weaving together multiple timelines, the inspirations for The Afterlife Project, and more. Check it out, I think you’ll enjoy it!

Very much enjoyed this interview on The Colorado Sun’s daily podcast, The Daily Sun-Up. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

The Colorado Sun has also published this excerpt of THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT and an extended on-line interview about the origins of the novel, the challenges of writing it, the author’s Colorado roots, and more.

All this media attention was perfectly timed to coincide with THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT’s Colorado book tour, which has been a smashing success. My gratitude to Kevin Simpson and everyone at The Colorado Sun!

This one goes into the category of truly fantastic news: In a fascinating weekend book round-up headlined “Waiting on the End of the World,” one of Canada’s premier newspapers, the Toronto Star, published an overwhelmingly positive review of THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT!

Quick excerpt: “It’s a relatively simple idea, but Tim Weed makes it into something special with first rate nature writing and a story that underlines how connected we all are to our human and physical environment—which can be a source of resilience even as everything falls apart together.”

Read the rest of the review & round-up here.

This interview with LA-based journalist, gamer, and film buff Paul Semel was especially fun because the conversation ranged into questions of film influences, including my ideal casting choices for the main characters of THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT. Read the whole interview here.

Quick excerpt: “In terms of influence, film and TV weren’t as important as other books, but my guess is that movies like Interstellar, Contact, and Arrival sort of gave me permission to pursue a story foregrounding the kind of “big” ambitious topics I was interested in, like space-time, general relativity, and the future of humanity, while TV series like Battlestar Galactica reminded me that when the survival of the human species is an open question, it can generate high stakes and robust dramatic tension. And the popularity of the great nature documentaries, like Planet Earth, showed that the awesome spectacles of life on Earth could be intrinsically riveting for mass audiences.”

Very cool: THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT was featured in a new scifi books roundup at Transfer Orbit, a newsletter run by Vermont writer Andrew Liptak that provides regular look at the latest news within the science fiction community, featuring analysis and commentary and updates about fiction, writing, and the future of reading.

Also very cool: THE AFTERLIFE PROJECT was featured in a best beach reads roundup by The Cullman Times in Cullman, Alabama—with the article also syndicated by the Rome News-Tribune in Rome, Georgia. Making inroads in the American south!

I also loved this notably glowing review from Shannon at It Starts at Midnight.

Quick excerpt: “This is hands down one of the most thought-provoking books that I have ever read. Which is saying something, because thought-provoking books are kind of my thing . . . I have so much to say about this book, but I equally want to tell you no more. Because this is the sort of story that needs to be experienced to be appreciated.” Read the whole review here.

I enjoyed reading this thoughtful and generally positive (if at times slightly grudging ;)) review from the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Finally, I very much appreciated this review of the audiobook on Instagram from @bookboundblogger.

Quick excerpt: “I am very picky about my sci-fi books. This one hit the mark! It didn’t feel like reading a novel. It felt like witnessing a slow‑motion disaster unfold with stunning imagery and quiet heartbreak. The science felt authentic. The emotion was raw. The tension never let up. It gave geography class, climate awareness, and gut‑punch storytelling all in one, but never preachy or feeling like an info-dump. Just deeply human.” Read the whole review here.