Novelist Tim Sandlin, an anchor of the Jackson Hole writing community for decades, died on March 29 at age 75. He first lived in Jackson Hole as a kid when his father was a seasonal ranger for Grand Teton National Park. He moved back in his 20s and worked wherever he could – at about 40 different joints, mostly washing dishes – to support his writing.
“I knew I would either be a dishwasher or a writer when I hit 65,” said the former Executive Director of Jackson Hole Writers in a 2015 interview with historian Charlie Craighead for a local documentary for the Town of Jackson. “If I started to get a job that I thought would turn into something, I quit it real quickly because I wanted to be desperate.
KHOL’s Sophia Boyd-Fliegel spoke with some who knew Sandlin over the years.
These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. – Ed.
Tina Welling, author: We met often at Pearl Street Bagels, of course, and had breakfast together and just talked about everything… I remember when he and Carol were adopting their daughter from China… He had a novel writing class and he’s so proud of this fact, but 40% of us got published. And I was one of them. And he always just pushed me along to do the next thing, even when I was bad at it.
Charlie Craighead, historian, author: In winters he would find a place to rent, where he wouldn’t freeze. I don’t know if he went back to the same places often… Summers he would camp out. He lived up the Gros Ventre for quite a while, typing in his tipi… He did have one story he told often of walking out of the Cowboy Bar one night… He had long hair, shoulder length hair and this was in the middle of the Cowboys versus Hippies time in town. And a bunch of young guys, young cowboys, were trying to get in. They weren’t old enough. And they got kicked out and Tim came walking up and they took their anger out on him. Beat him up and left him there.
Connie Wieneke, poet: I was working at the Jackson Hole News, and I was hired as a reporter and Tim was the copy editor… As I recall it, he came up with this idea of having The Pyms, this family that lived in Hoback, and he was kind of mocking people of a certain type, I suppose… He did such a good job that people thought that they were real. It was hilarious. I remember someone called up one time and they were really annoyed because they had tried to find the Pyms.
Matt Daly, poet, executive director at Jackson Hole Writers: I don’t know that Jackson is fully aware of how successful Tim was as a writer… Tim was also a very public writer. The practice of writing is quite private, but he did that in public a lot, at the center desk, at Pearl Street [Bagels], the way he moved through the [Valley] Bookstore.
Angus Thurmer, reporter at WyoFile: I took his ‘Write Your Novel’ class and I chatted with him regularly at the back table at Pearl Street Bagels… I knew Tim for decades from my work at the Jackson Hole News, where he was a copy editor and a columnist. I don’t know which was more dangerous… He would point out contradictions and shallow thinking and it made you laugh and doing that allowed you to let down your guard… Nobody in Jackson Hole could put a finger on a particular character in any of his novels that were loosely based around Jackson Hole and say, ‘Oh, that’s so-and-so.’ You could see a part of one of his characters as resembling somebody you knew, but only one part.
