Tim Earley was born and raised in the Sandy Mush community of Rutherford County, North Carolina. He is the author of five books of poems, Boondoggle (Main Street Rag, 2005), The Spooking of Mavens (Cracked Slab Books, 2010), Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (Horse Less Press, 2014), which won the 2015 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award, Linthead Stomp (Horse Less Press, 2016), and Epigrams Both Ludic and Regicidal (Delete Press, 2019).

His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Chicago Review, Colorado Review, jubilat, Southern Humanities Review, Sink Review, Typo, Conduit, The Ecopoetry Anthology, Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains, and the Hick Poetics Anthology. He was educated at Isothermal Community College, USC Upstate, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing.

He is the recipient of writing fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland. Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, he teaches online courses in creative writing, Appalachian literature, fantasy literature, and early British literature. 

Tim is the founder of Odd Bard Games, a group of poets and writers dedicated to producing tabletop roleplaying games with an emphasis on character development and narrative richness. His first game, Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse, uses the Savage Worlds rules system and focuses on labor conflict, environmental crisis, and Appalachian ghost stories/folklore. Holler will be published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group in 2021.