Tyler Gillespie is an award-winning writer and educator. He’s written for Rolling Stone, GQ, The Washington Post, The Nation, Salon, and Playboy. His poetry appears in anthologies such as In Absentia: Reflections on the Pandemic and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology while his humor writing can be found in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and LGBTQ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny. He’s the author of a nonfiction collection The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021) and two poetry books — the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023) and Florida Man: Poems, Revisited (Red Flag Poetry, 2018/Burrow Press, 2024). He posts poetry and risograph prints on Instagram (@tyler_gills).

Gillespie is a fifth-generation Floridian who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans, an MA in Journalism & Media Studies from the University of South Florida, and a PhD in English: Writing, Rhetoric, & Technical Communication from the University of Memphis. His academic scholarship appears in College Composition and Communication, Community Literacy Journal, and The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric. He teaches writing at Ringling College of Art and Design.