Tim Sandlin, Jackson Hole, Wyo.'s "most prolific author" and founder of the Jackson Hole Writer's Conference, died March 29, the News & Guide reported. He was 75. Lit, published last December, was his 13th book, 11 of which were novels, including four set in the fictional Teton town of GroVont. He also published two collections of columns, and wrote screenplays.
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| Tim Sandlin | |
"I wrote five novels about my problems and then I ran out of problems," Sandlin had observed, "so I wrote movies because you don't have to have problems to write movies. After a few years of that I developed all new problems so I went back to novels and that's where I am now."
The News & Guide noted: "While making the valley his home for roughly half a century, Sandlin wrote, mentored aspiring authors and catalyzed the writing community via the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, which he ran for three decades... From his customary perch at the back table of Pearl Street Bagels on Pearl Avenue, Sandlin churned out book after book, painstakingly scratching on yellow legal pads for years. He kept an ear to the room, always on the lookout for material. He absorbed the ski bum-rancher-artist-hippie patois from his main listening post."
When the Center for the Arts opened in 2004, Jackson Hole Writers became one of its first resident organizations, and Sandlin worked shifts at the Center's information desk for 20 years. Marty Camino, executive director of the Center, said, "He could interact with people he knew, but also could sit there and write. He loved Sunday morning shifts. He was a consistent presence. He left a mark on many people in our community."
In his 30s, Sandlin earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. The manuscript he completed there would be published as Sex and Sunsets, "read pretty early on by Larry McMurtry while Sandlin was still a dishwasher at Anthony's. And a career was born," the News & Guide noted. "Without him, I would have no career or life as I have had the last 35 years," Sandlin wrote in a tribute on Facebook when McMurtry died.
Sandlin landed a copy editing job at the Jackson Hole News. Former publisher Michael Sellett recalled: "He was a wonderful addition to the newsroom because of his quirky sense of humor, but he was also serious about his copy editing." Sellett eventually let Sandlin publish a column, "As the Hole Deepens." Some of those columns were later collected in The Pyms: Unauthorized Tales of Jackson Hole. Sellett remembered that the columns featured "a whole cast of characters who offered very cynical but humorous commentary on both local government and local issues in general. They were sometimes quite pointed."
As he continued to publish novels like Western Swing and the GroVont Trilogy (Skipped Parts, Sorrow Floats, and Social Blunders), Sandlin "would make the rounds at Valley Bookstore in Gaslight Alley 'just about every day' to check the shelves and make sure his books, 'hilarious portraits of misfits,' former bookstore employee and poet Matt Daly said, were being properly marketed," the News & Guide wrote.
Regarding Sandlin's final novel, Lit, Brash Books publisher Lee Goldberg said, "It is this strange cross between gentle literary fiction and a cozy mystery. It's hard to position him. He writes comedy, but it's also heartbreaking. He walked a strange line in his writing. I was just so enchanted by the writing and by Tim, I didn't care."
Goldberg added: "He died being back in the saddle, so to speak. Tim had a sharp eye, a keen understanding of character. He's an author who deserved a much wider audience than he got. He was appreciated more by other authors than by the wider public."