A Conversation with Dylan Terry
Dylan Terry is a Chicago-based writer and professional nerd. His prose attempts to show how humanity can exist within messy and bizarre circumstances, though sometimes he writes about rock concerts and bug-people. His award-winning audio-drama and improv comedy podcast work can be found by searching for Some Nobodies on all platforms.
Dylan’s short story, “A Warm and Heavy Air,” can be read in Issue no. 1 of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine.
“A Warm and Heavy Air” is one of our 2025 Pushcart Prize nominees.
Camila: First off, tell us a bit about your writing journey. What got you started and a bit about yourself?
Dylan: I was doomed from an early age by two parents who raised me in an environment of working artists. Combine that with a hyperactive imagination and early love of reading, and it was the perfect mix to lock me in. I think a lot of it came from my dad—when I was young-young, he'd tell me bedtime stories based on excerpts from the Silmarillion, things about giant spiders and dragons and magic swords. The first book I ever picked on my own was Animorphs #16: The Warning, because six-year-old me was a monster-kid and wanted to know what the hell was happening. After that series, I shifted into more classical fare like Lord of the Rings, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, and then the more pulpy fantasy novels. Some students of my parents introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, and I had a moment where I realized you can make up your own stories. Crazy, right?
The first thing I consciously remember writing was a dragon-rider story in fourth grade, because who hasn't done that? The teacher wrote something on the paper along the lines of, "INTERESTING!" and from there it was kind of a done deal. In high school, I realized this was actually something people could pursue, so I enrolled in Bowling Green State University's creative writing BFA program. My thesis from that program wound up getting expanded into my first novel, which I'm currently reworking to serialize on my Substack. I've always written fiction and prose, but I'm also incredibly fortunate to have a consistent paid writing gig where I write the playbooks for a LARPing summer camp based in Boulder, Colorado, so I've got my feet wet in the game writing space as well.
After a decade out of school, I did what a lot of artists do and went back to grad school. I'm expecting to graduate from Columbia College Chicago's creative writing MFA program as a member of the program's final cohort before the school axes the entire thing.
Camila: Tell us about the experience writing this piece.
Dylan: It was originally written for a workshop course at Columbia, and then I brought it to a monthly fiction workshop hosted by a friend of mine (Factory Setting Prose*, check it out) and I was able to get some really quality feedback which improved the draft I submitted. There's a lot of personal stuff in “A Warm and Heavy Air,” for sure, but it was also an exercise in managing length. I have a problem with brevity—which is why I call myself a novelist—so my goal with this was to get in, hit the character and thematic beats, and get out. I pulled a lot from some personal experiences I've had with loss and grief, which I think is what you have to do as a storyteller. I tend to let ideas percolate and slowcook until I'm ready to get them on the page, then sprint through the actual act of filling the blank spaces, and that stayed true for this piece. I think taking from lived experiences helped with the process of actually putting it down. Sometimes processing those elements of events can make things more difficult, but in this case, I was fortunate to have it make things easier.
The biggest challenge was balancing the genre elements with the character and thematic bits. I'm trying to follow in the footsteps of authors like Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, and those speculative fiction authors who create these beautiful, vivid, and tactile worlds so close (or so alien) to our own, but who never let those genre elements get in the way of the broader message. I think, especially when you're messing with time, you run the risk of just leaving your reader confused, so it was the community workshops which really helped me hone this into a readable piece.
(Note: Factory Setting Prose is a Chicago-based fiction workshop hosted by Taylor Thornburg, one of our Issue no. 1 prose editors for Sabr Tooth Tiger!)
Camila: Which of the two characters do you relate to the most? It almost feels like a war between two different sides.
Dylan: There's a lot of me in both Simon and Jasper. I don't know that I relate to either of them more than the other. They're both stuck in this place—both physically and mentally—which won't let them go or move on, and they're both constantly looking backwards at the paths which brought them here. I suppose there's something to say for Simon taking the initiative by establishing this ritualistic grave-digging, but that's his own form of captivity, right? Is Sisyphus happy just because he's moving, or would he be happier standing at the bottom of the hill? I don't know that either situation lends itself to emotional release. It's like… Would I rather get stuck in traffic on the highway or take side-roads? Both routes get me to my location at the same ETA, but one involves movement and the other doesn't. I think I prefer movement—which I guess makes me realize I relate more to Simon.
I did assign a lot of my own frustration to Jasper, though. The unfairness of how his friend was treated, the frustration at getting stuck in a place he dislikes due to his own decision —which was made because he thought he was taking a moment for himself—things haven't worked out for him through no fault of his own, and so I think his anger is justified. I think Jasper and 25-year-old Dylan would have a pretty fun time complaining about various things. I think Simon and 35-year-old Dylan would have a nice, quiet drink together after work.
Camila: Religion is a recurring theme in this story. What do you hope readers take away from the way you portray faith and belief?
Dylan: I was raised in a gently religious household in a viciously religious part of Ohio, and the tension between Simon and Jeff in their own discussions was inspired by various conversations I had with friends of mine growing up. Looking back, I don't know that I ever sincerely believed in any higher power, despite my own attempts to make myself take it seriously. It would be easy, I think, for people to take an event like the Universal Temporal Recurrence—a time loop involving the entire world—as some kind of proof of a higher power. But Simon can't quite bring himself to commit to it, and his lifeline to that belief died just days before this event began. So he's stuck in this state of wondering how Jeff would have taken this seemingly supernatural event, but can't. The ambiguity at the end of whether Jeff is “looking down” from whatever afterlife there might be is, I think, the closest to a thesis the story might have.
Loss is tough, and it's often senseless, and I don't think there's much of a purpose to it, or a “right” way to go about processing it. But I think there might be harmful ways, and I know I wouldn't want my loved ones to ritualistically dig me a grave every five days as some kind of penance. But, if it helps them process it, I'd just hope they wouldn't choose to do it alone.
Camila: How do you access your most creative headspace?
Dylan: Unfortunately, it usually happens as I'm lying in bed at the end of the day as I'm drifting to sleep. My mind wanders and it drifts to some idea I'm trying to shape or craft, and it'll tap into some element or some concept which makes me go, "A-ha!" and I roll over and jot it down on my notes app. I've got a big document just called Brainwall where I write down every little thing which comes to me and might be useful, whether it's a silly band name or a title for something or a little scene vignette. Then, when I sit down with the intent of doing The Hard Work of actually hitting the blank white spaces, I have some bits and pieces I can pull from.
That's the key, I think—always be jotting things down. I've lost so many good ideas to the fog in my head that I know sometimes I have to stop and write down my most recent band name or it'll be lost to time, and I can't not have a list of hypothetical band names.
