SELECTED FICTION AND CREATIVE NONFICTION from JOURNALS
THE YUCCA PEOPLE OF THE SOUTHWEST
Southwest Contemporary, Vol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place, Fall 2022
In The Yucca People, writer Tyler Stallings and photographer Naida Osline contemplate the desert and land use through the lens of the Yucca plant.
In this light, I see the Yucca People come alive. When the shadows shift from long to short as the sun rises, they are on the move, their shapes transforming into elders, alien beings, ghosts, shamans, kings, queens, warriors, victims, seekers, sentinels, and migrants of the Southwest. For 40 million years, they have silently populated these arid lands: sometimes germinating, other times cloning. Some clonal rings are nearly 2,000 years old. Deserts knitted through California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico are their domains.
—Tyler Stallings, excerpt from essay
REVOLVING
From
Los Angeles Review, Vol. 16, Fall 2014
A literary journal of divergent literature with a West Coast emphasis
Tyler Stallings explores inheriting a gun from his father, its karma, gun culture in the southeast, and the hidden meanings in a manual for the Smith & Wesson revolver.
I inherited a revolver from my father. I’ve never shot it. It has sat in its leather holster for decades. As his only child and son, it came into my possession when he died thirty-five years ago at age thirty-five. I was thirteen years old then, but my last contact with him was when I was ten, saying goodbye after his divorce from my mother. It took years to have a cop friend open it properly to see if it was loaded. It was not. Prior to this favor, I had horrible fantasies of an unforeseen bullet fired mistakenly, killing whoever was in its path. That never happened, but what has been fired into my life since inheriting the gun is its karma
—Tyler Stallings, excerpt from essay
CONTRIBUTED CREATIVE WRITING TO PERIODICALS, JOURNALS, AND QUARTERLIES
CREATIVE NON-FICTION
2022
“The Yucca People of the Southwest,” Southwest Contemporary, vol. 6 (2022), forthcoming, with photographs from Naida Osline
“Reaching for the Light: Daniel Hawkins' Wild West Dream of a Desert Lighthouse,” Daniel Hawkins: Desert Lighthouse, forthcoming book
2017
“Southern California Science Fictional Thinking,” Boom Magazine, September 2017
2015
“A New, or Old, Urban Legend: The Vanishing Artist, or Painting is Dead (Again),” Hearsay: Artists Reveal Urban Legends, Fullerton, California: Grand Central Press, pp. 11-15.
“Revolving,” Los Angeles Journal, vol. 16, winter 2015, pp. 62-69.
2013
“Repurposing the Los Angeles Aqueduct as a Pathway for Sacred Pilgrimages,” Arid: A Journal of Desert Art, Design and Ecology, vol. 2, no. 2, (fall/winter 2013), pp. 68-76.
2012
“Banal Access to Transcendence, or Developing Telekinesis via Mattel’s EEG-based Game, Mindflex™,” Rabble, no. 1 (2012): 1-6. [A pamphlet format devoted to a single author for each issue, edited by Holly Myers.]
2011
“Cut-up Cat-Up Catch-Up,” Shifter, No. 16 (2011): 165-167. [Pluripotential issue, edited by Sreshta Rit Premnath along with guest editor Warren Neidich.]
2008-2009
“Southland Flaneur” column for Artillery art magazine
Wrote the “Southland Flaneur” column for Artillery art magazine, based in Los Angeles. Each essay began with an art exhibition or event that would become the impetus for considering larger issues in the world. Its lyrical and freewheeling style is a precedent for the longer form one that I use for my current postings on KCET-TV Artbound (see above for their titles).
“The Civil War: Re-Enacting at the Beach,” Artillery (September-October 2008): 46.
“A Happening: Trading Dirt, or Walking with a Dirty Mind,” Artillery (July-August 2008): 44-45. [Re: Alan Kaprow]
Possession: Real Estate Development with Gordon Matta-Clark,” Artillery (January 2008): 49.
“Presence Machines: Philip K. Dick’s Roman Empire and ‘The Imaginary 20th Century,’” Artillery (May-June 2008): 16. [Re: Norman Klein’s exhibition based on his interactive book]
“Ribbing the Creation Museum,” Artillery (March-April 2009): 16.
“Spirits of Mass Production: Graciela Iturbide’s ‘The Goat’s Dance’ and the Ecstasy of Meatpacking,” Artillery (March 2008): 24.
“Visiting with China’s Ancient Terra Cotta Warriors, or Combat-Ready for Paradise,” Artillery (November-December 2008): 16.
2012-2013
KCET-TV Artbound, https://www.kcet.org/people/tyler-stallings
Columnist for KCET-TV’s Artbound program exploring cultural events in and/or related to the Inland Empire, which includes Riverside, Palm Springs, and San Bernardino. Artbound covers events in Southern California from Santa Barbara to San Diego. The editors select online stories to make into short video documentaries, which includes the columnist, that are compiled into an hour-long program, which was aired monthly.
2013
Considering Whiteness As Ideology and Not Biology, January 23, 2013
Free Enterprise: The Art of Citizen Space Exploration, January 16, 2013
2012
Kent Anderson Butler Reconciles Art and Religion, December 12, 2012
Hell's Union: Motorcycle Club Cuts as American Folk Art, November 14, 2012
Representing Revolt: Images of the Mexican Revolution, October 24, 2012
Considering the Sound of an Air Conditioner: John Cage and "Zen Ox-Herding Pictures," October 10, 2012
"Troubling Borders" Brings Southeast Asian Women to Riverside, September 26, 2012
Secession in the Desert: How Walking through a Mock Iraqi City Led to Aridtopia, September 12, 2012
An Inland Empire Afterlife: Immortality, Cryonics, and a Giant Marilyn Monroe, August 16, 2012
Resurrection Machines of Ancient Egypt in San Bernardino and of Ancient Cinema in Hollywood, August 1, 2012
PASOS: Video Installations by Marsia Alexander-Clarke, July 18, 2012
Reconsidering Fourth of July Fireworks and Independence Day in Light of Cai Guo-Qiang's 'Sky Ladder', July 4, 2012
Levitating the Archaic Mind with Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 20, 2012
The Idyll-Beast: The Imaginary (Idyll)Wild Child, June 6, 2012
The Haunting Howl of Riverside Railways, May 23, 2012
From Beefcake to Skatecake: Masculinity in the Swimming Pool, May 7, 2012
2000
“The Corner Medicine Cabinet.” L A Weekly, 16 June 2000.
“When Jesus Walked: A tour of Trinity Christian City International.” LA Weekly 13 July 2000.
FICTION
2006
“Smithson’s Snow,” Artillery (November 2006): 9.
2004
18th Street Art Complex, Artistswhomakeartwriteaboutitandjustdoitall, exh. cat., Santa Monica, CA.
2001
“Gut Reactions of the Masters,” Coagula (2001).
2000
“The Maternal Computer,” Traffic Report (2000).
“The Power of the Purse”, L.A. Weekly, Fashion Issue, 16-23 March 2000, 43.
1997
“Flowers,” Errant Bodies, Spring 1997.
1994
Uncontrollable Bodies: Testimonies of Identity and Culture, Bay Press, Seattle, WA
Errant Bodies, Los Angeles, CA, edited by Brandon LaBelle
Crash, exhibition catalogue, Thread Waxing Space, New York, NY, co-edited by Thomas Zummer and Robert Reynolds
Framework, Los Angeles, CA, co-edited by Jody Zellen and Susan Kandel
Grammarians, exhibition catalogue, Chapman University, Orange, CA, edited by Michael Anderson
Perforations, Atlanta, GA
1993
Real Life, New York, NY/Los Angeles, CA, edited by Thomas Lawson
Signifier, Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA
1992
Perforations, Atlanta, GA
1991
Rules for Wishful Deterioration, Los Angeles: self-published, 1991.
Peforations, Atlanta, GA
1983
Shagbark Review, v. 9, Murray State University, KY (best of fiction)
POETRY
2014
“Water Does Not Fight,” The Aqueduct Sonnets, Los Angeles: University of California Press and UCLA Library Special Collections
1999
Aporia, n. 3, Toronto, Canada
1998
Aporia, n. 2, Toronto, Canada
1995
Art Papers, v. 19, n. 3, Atlanta, GA
1990
The Act, n. 4, New York, NY
1987
Central Park, n. 11, New York, NY
1986
The Mountain Goat, v. 40, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN
1985
The Mountain Goat, v. 39, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN