Poetry Collections:
“Newspaper Drumsticks,” Book Merah, August 2021.
Hard-edged yet restless and heartfelt; laconic poems roughly hewn from behind prison walls.
– Cyril Wong, author of Infinity Diary
“Unique & Refreshing Poems by Tyler Dempsey,” NewPagesBlog, by C.L. Butler, April, 2020.
Tyler reading the two poems reviewed in Butler’s essay.
Video interview about Newspaper Drumsticks, writing, writing influences, story collection Time As A Sort Of Enemy, and Alaska.
Novels:
“Consumption & Other Vices,” Death of Print, 2023.
Take a hard-boiled detective story, then strip it of all its unnecessary parts until it’s ready to run on a NASCAR track. Tell it in a dreamy narrative of a Vertigo comic, and you have Tyler Dempsey’s Consumption and Other Vices. – Bucky Sinister, author of Black Hole
Tyler Dempsey is all consuming. He is a small town crucifix. Cheap nail polish and glitter. Feel this, read this, know this. Then read it again. – Tyler Dillow, author of Watershed
Read this interview in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine
Will We All Still See Each Other Afterward, Anxiety Press, 2023
“WILL WE ALL STILL SEE EACH OTHER AFTERWARD will get stuck in your head like an ear worm that won’t stop crawling around until long after its final page. That Dempsey can take a story as universal, simple, and timeless as friends-with-benefits and make it a page turner is all the evidence you need of his talent as a writer. It’s a love story, it’s a platonic-friends story, it’s a story full of heart with no taking sides, no he said/she said, which is further evidence of Dempsey’s soul on the page. These characters are all heart and good intentions but of course we all know where good intentions get us. They get us to a real story about complicated people and how hard it is to be a human and maintain your humanity in the face of all the ugly, counterproductive urges we have to find purpose and meaning in this world and all the people that surround us. All that and a lot of fun sex stuff. You need this book in your life.”
— Benjamin Drevlow, author of THE BOOK OF RUSTY
“Tyler’s buck-naked honesty and strobe light sentences make WILL WE ALL STILL SEE EACH OTHER AFTERWARD a profound and nearly hallucinogenic reading experience. It was the urgency of the writing that pulled me in but ultimately his love for these characters and this setting and — yes, ironically — this life that ultimately pays off. A brilliant work of autofiction from a one of a kind talent.”
— Mike Nagel, author of DUPLEX
Tyler interviewed on The Lives of Writers.
A review in Maudlin House.
A review in Thirty West.
Story Collections:
Follow the Brush, Self-published, 2024.
“Referencing Green Day like Dempsey himself, this book is a walking contradiction in the best way: spare but full, clever but approachable, playful but emotionally resonant. Follow the Brush will linger in your consciousness longer than any concept of time you might have.”
—Claire Hopple, It’s Hard to Say
“Dempsey writes like characters are forcing their way out of him, exiting out of every orifice, hanging off of his eyelids and dangling from his nosehairs. He gets inside their heads while they climb out of his. And yet we only get glimpses, half thoughts, and brief moments in time rather than the full all-encompassing picture. Because if we were to get it all, every intricate detail floating behind the pages and stories of Follow the Brush, we might collapse under all that weight.”
—KKUURRTT, Good at Drugs
“Follow the Brush is a strobe light in a vast warehouse, illuminating in brief pulses all the dark corners. Here a stack of old photos and here a crinkled recipe and here a stack of dusty costumes. And here a gun. The characters that populate these stories live on the outskirts, hiding from responsibility, but they are desperate to be discovered. They want you to find them and love them and tell them that everything is going to be okay. Even if the end is in sight.”
—Josh Denslow, Not Everyone is Special
Tyler Dempsey 