About Tim

A fourth generation native of Northern California, Tim Hunt was born in Calistoga and raised primarily in Sebastopol, two small towns north of San Francisco.  As a boy he also identified strongly with the Lake County region of his father’s family, where his aunt taught him “I Can Tell You Are a Logger ‘Cause You Stir Your Coffee with Your Thumb,” while a rockabilly cousin offered “Heartbreak Hotel.”  Before heading east to school, he also discovered such wonders as “Section 43” by Country Joe and the Fish.  In his teen years he dreamed of playing guitar like Carl Perkins and being able to sing like Fred Neil.

Educated at Cornell University, he has taught American literature at several schools, including Washington State University and Deep Springs College.  He is currently Professor of English at Illinois State University, in Normal, Illinois.  He and his wife Susan, a respiratory therapist, have two children: John, a visual artist, and Jessica, a musician and composer.  Hunt once claimed to have been the rhythm guitarist in the band Derridean Debris, though to the best of his knowledge such a band never existed.  He is, though, fortunate enough to own a fine 12-string that he promises himself he will eventually learn to play as well as it deserves.

Hunt’s poetry has been widely published in magazines, and he has published the chapbook Lake County Diamond. He has also been awarded the Chester H. Jones Prize for the poem “Lake County Elegy.”  Fault Lines is his first full-length collection.  His scholarly publications include Kerouac’s Crooked Road: Development of a Fiction and the five-volume edition The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.