Tim Carmichael
Bio
Tim is an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. He writes about rural life, family, and the places he grew up around. His poetry and essays have appeared in Beautiful and Brutal Things, his latest book.
Achievements (16)
Stories (310)
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The Voucher Program
Tennessee's Education Savings Account program was introduced to the legislature in 2023 with a specific image attached to it. A poor child in a failing school whose parents finally have the power to do something about it. That image did most of the political work. The bill passed. The program launched. And then the data started coming in, and the data described a different child entirely.
By Tim Carmichaela day ago in Humans
The Legible Child
A particular kind of exhaustion accumulates not from overwork but from performing work that cannot be seen. It settles slowly, over months or years, until one day a teacher stands at a photocopier early in the morning, watching pages collate, and notices she no longer knows why she chose this profession. She gathers her papers, walks to her classroom, and begins another day of documentation.
By Tim Carmichael2 days ago in Humans
The Midsummer Ritual. Winner in Rituals of Affection Challenge.
Granny Wise kept the tin box on the highest shelf. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I wasn’t allowed to stand too close when she opened it on Midsummer’s Eve. Seed spilled through her fingers like brown rain.
By Tim Carmichael13 days ago in Fiction
The Pride Flag and the Diversion. Top Story - February 2026.
For nearly a decade, the LGBTQIA Pride Flag rippled in the wind at Christopher Park, a kaleidoscope of color staked into the soil of America’s first national monument to LGBTQIA+ liberation. That flag came down this week. Federal officials, citing new guidance from the Trump Administration, silently lowered the rainbow flag from its pole across the street from the Stonewall Inn. The birthplace of the modern gay rights movement now flies only the United States flag.
By Tim Carmichael14 days ago in Pride
What the Moon-Eyed People Left Behind
The story goes that before the Cherokee came to the Appalachian Mountains; there lived a race of pale people who could only see at night. They had large, round eyes sensitive to daylight, and they built stone walls and earthworks across the valleys. When the Cherokee arrived, they drove the Moon-Eyed People west, and that was that. The pale night-dwellers vanished, and the Cherokee claimed the land.
By Tim Carmichael22 days ago in Fiction
