Tim Staley grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. He earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry from New Mexico State University in 2004, and went on to teach Creative Writing at several institutions in South Central New Mexico including Doña Ana Community College, New Mexico State University and Organ Mountain High School.

In 2025, Staley singlehandedly changed the game with the publication of APPLEPEAR, the first ever scented poetry chapbook to hit Earthly Markets. Staley is also the author of several unscented poetry collections, including Lost On My Own Street (Pski’s Porch Publishing, 2015), The Most Honest Syllable is Shhh (NightBallet Press, 2016), and The Pieces You Have Left (Beatlick Press, 2021).

Staley’s poems have been curated by dozens of literary journals and anthologies, including “BorderSenses”, “Chiron Review,” “Circumference Magazine,” “Jokes Review”, “Resurrection of a Sunflower—A Vincent van Gogh Anthology“, “RHINO: The Poetry Forum,” “The New Mexico Poetry Anthology 2023” and “Looking to the Mountain: Sacred Lands, Healing Cultures—A Gila Anthology of Words and Pictures“.

Staley has been the recipient of many awards and honors for his teaching and writing, including the Doña Ana Arts Council 2016 Arts in Education Award, the 2012 Luminaire Award for Best in Poetry by Alternating Current Press and the 2004 Peter Harris-Kunz Endowed Award in Poetry.

In 2021, Bloomsbury Academic released Imaginative Writing: A Guide for Secondary Classrooms in which Staley contributed a chapter called “Unruining Poetry”. Acclaimed educator Penny Kittle blurbed, “As poet and teacher Tim Staley says in a chapter I wish I had written, ‘Poetry should be a break from the typical horrors of high school'”