Tish Turl is a writer and poet from Central Illinois living in southern Illinois by way of Las Vegas, Nevada. Tish is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Southern Illinois University - Carbondale. Growing up they had a pet cow named Bob – named after an auctioneer at the sale barn. Turl beat up homophobes in high school. They literally once owned a pair of rose-colored glasses but lost them. Tish is a former editor at Red Wedge Magazine. They are a writer and editor at Locust Review, a quarterly irrealist journal of art and literature, and a member of the Locust Arts and Letters Collective (LALC). Their published work includes the serialized novella Sound, the short stories, “Space Goths,” “Memez,” and “Sewerbot,” and the serialized poems of the Toilet Key Anthology. They are currently working on the evolving Born Again Labor Museum project, and the Stink Ape Resurrection Primer, with their partner and fellow LALC member, Adam Turl.
Adam Turl is an artist and writer from southern Illinois — by way of Wisconsin, Chicago, Saint Louis, upstate New York and Las Vegas. They are an artist and editor at Locust Review and a member of the Locust Arts and Letters Collective (LALC). They have had solo exhibitions at the Brett Wesley Gallery (Las Vegas), the Cube (Las Vegas), Project 1612 (Peoria, Illinois), and Artspace 304 (Carbondale, Illinois). In 2016 Turl was awarded a fellowship and residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, France. They received their MFA from Washington University in St. Louis at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, and a BFA from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale. Turl is working on an evolving conceptual and visual art project, Born Again Labor Museum, with their partner Tish Turl, a writer and fellow LALC member. They host the monthly podcast Locust Radio. They are also a PhD candidate in media arts at SIUC.
PRESS, INTERVIEWS + MEDIA COVERAGE
(2025) Jordy Cummings, “Dude, Where’s My Aura?” Locust Review (November 6, 2025)
(2025) Conrad Hamilton reviews “Gothic Capitalism,” Marx & Philosophy (December 27, 2025)
(2025) Laura Fair-Schulz, “Review of Adam Turl’s Gothic Marxism,” Spectre Journal (October 31, 2025)
Anna Casey (producer), “Museum examines workers’ rights through art,” 21st Show (February 7, 2022)
“Tish Markley and Adam Turl Bring Their Art to Core Contemporary,“ VIM (March 5, 2020)
Craig Wilson, “Adam Turl presents The Barista Who Disappeared,” Carbondale Nightlife (June 2018)
Craig E. Ross, “Adam Turl + Alexander Billet,” interview, Dumpster Pizza Podcast #2 (May 2017)
James Diaz, “Interview with Artist Adam Turl,” Anti-Heroin Chic (October 2016)
Liam Otten, “Red Mars + The Fictional Artist,” The Source (June 2016)
Beall, Dickson, “Adam Turl, MFA 2016” (video interview), St. Louisan (May 2016)
Project 1612, “Post-1612 with Adam Turl” (interview), Post-1612 (May 2016)
Janessa Kenway, “13 Baristas Pours it On Hot + Heavy,” Las Vegas Seven (September 2015)
Anthony Pickens, “Art Reception Expresses Area Social Conflicts,” Daily Egyptian (February 2013)
SELECTED ARTICLES + ESSAYS
(2023) “Commune vs. Cathedral vs. Bazaar,” Adam Turl, Imago #2 (May 2023), 40-54
"Being with the Prophets,” Adam Turl, Imagojournal.com (November 11, 2022)
(2023) Roundtable with Tish Turl, Anupam Roy, and Adam Turl, “Constructing Counter-Imaginaries,” Imago #2 (May 2023), 55-68
“Against Purgatory,” Adam Turl, Tempestmag.org (February 23, 2022)
“Class Revenge Fanfiction,” Tish Turl, Locust Review (Winter 2022), 5
“Aelita vs. Elon Musk,” Adam Turl, Imagojournal.com (September 2, 2021)
“Their Weird and Ours: Critical Irrealism vs. Fascist Occultism,” Adam Turl, Imago #1 (August, 2021)
“The Urgency of Anti-Fascism,” Adam Turl, Tempestmag.org (October 1, 2020)
“Against Hopepunk,” Adam Turl, Locust Review online (January 13, 2020)
“A Worker Reads Graphic Novels,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (January 2, 2020)
“We Are All Outsider Artists Now,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (May 2019)
“Outsider Art is a Lie,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (February 2019)
“Gentrification + The Weak Avant-Garde,” Adam Turl, Evicted Art Blog (January 2019)
“No More Art Districts,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (December 2018)
“Who Will Be Pirate Jenny?” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (June 2018)
“Aesthetic Leveling: Riot + Poetry,” Adam Turl, Red Wedge Magazine (Nov 2017)
“Anti-Fascist Protest Targets MoMA,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (February 2017)
“Evicted Art: Eight Points,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (August 2016)
“The Art of Primitive Communism,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (May 2016)
“The Democratic Image,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (April 2016)
“Against the Weak Avant-Garde,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (April 2016)
“The Art Space as Epic Theater,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (April 2015)
“Weak Socialism + Contemporary Art,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (December 2015)
“An Opera for Beggars,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (August 2015)
“In Defense of Artistic Autonomy,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (September 2014)
“A Thousand Lost Worlds: Notes on Gothic Marxism,” Adam Turl, RedWedgeMagazine.com (Summer 2014)
“Ways of (Not) Seeing,” Adam Turl, SocialistWorker.org (June 2013)