Tim Youd Photo: Deanna Sirlin
Dracula, Dragons, and Adaptation: A Conversation with Tim Youd
By Carol Senf
Typewriter in Tim Youd's Striking Characters, 2025, Schatten Gallery, Emory University, Photo: Deanna Sirlin
Los Angeles based performance and visual artist Tim Youd works in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, and video. In addition to his work as a visual artist, Tim is a writer who has written a screenplay and short stories and is currently writing a novel. After working in an investment bank and producing several independent films in Hollywood, he decided to move full time to creating art. While some of his creations are stand-alone projects, many more are parts of various series that inform one another, including his Tree of Life Series and his 100 Novels Project, a series of individual works of art that should require 15 years to complete as Youd travels around the world to retype novels using the same kinds of typewriters the original authors used and setting his performance in locations connected to those authors. Most recently, Youd retyped Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, at the Miami Beach Convention Center with Cristin Tierney Gallery during the annual Art Basel Miami Beach art fair. In 1972, both the Democrats and the Republicans held their conventions in the convention center, making it an ideal location. In fact, Hunter S. Thompson is particularly significant to the 100 Novels Project.
The first novel Youd retyped was Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, back in 2013. He chose this because he knew that Thompson himself, when he was a young writer, retyped Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Other notable retyping performances include Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, which Tim typed on an Underwood-Olivetti Studio 44 in Dresden, Germany, where Vonnegut himself was trapped during the WW2 fire bombings; Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter at her childhood home in Columbus, GA; Richard Wright’s Native Son at Chicago’s Hall Branch Library, which was a key meeting place for Chicago’s Black Renaissance; and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, which brought Tim to Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, outside Oxford, Mississippi.
One of his most recent exhibitions, Striking Characters, Literary Worlds, and the Art of Tim Youd, was housed at the Emory Library from September 19 to December 20, 2025, for which he retyped Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Youd’s objective in retyping these 100 novels in a location connected to the novel is to examine the role that the typewriter has played in reshaping literature and art over the previous two centuries. While most of the novels Tim has retyped were written in the twentieth or twenty first century, Dracula was published in 1897.
Carol Senf
Atlanta, Georgia 2026
Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker, 1927 edition and signed by Bram Stoker in the exhibition of Tim Youd's Striking Characters, 2025, Schatten Gallery, Emory University, Photo: Deanna Sirlin
Carol Senf: Thanks for introducing me to the exhibit and for discussing it with me. I know from my years working on Dracula as well as Stoker’s other works that he was fascinated with new technology, so I really want to look at your fascination with technology. First, though, I want to know a bit more about location. I associate Stoker with London, where much of Dracula takes place, but he was born in Dublin and graduated from Trinity College. I also know from reading Stoker’s A Glimpse of America (1885) and his memoir of his employer, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906) that Stoker never visited Atlanta though he was familiar with the United States and enthusiastic about it. So, what’s the connection to Emory?
Tim Youd: The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive and Rare Book Library at Emory acquired the Stoker materials from the John Moore Bram Stoker Collection in 2021. Moore was an Irish collector, and the Emory collection includes one of the biggest collections of Stoker materials in the world. There are first editions, handwritten manuscripts, translations, and related materials such as film adaptations and comic books -- approximately 4,000 items total and 1500 books.
CS: That’s interesting. Stoker never travelled to Transylvania either, and that hasn’t stopped people from exploring the connections between Dracula and Transylvania. How did you get started on this project?
TY: I’ve been fascinated by typewriters since I was a kid and can remember playing on the typewriters that my parents owned. We tend to forget that typewriters were as ubiquitous when I was growing up as computers are today. My initial inspiration came when I learned that Hunter S. Thompson typed The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises to learn to be a better writer. I find the typing helps me to be a good reader and that the great reward of the project for me has been that I’ve become a much better reader.
Tim Youd typing on the Hammond 12 in Striking Characters, 2025, Schatten Gallery, Emory University, Photo: Bita Honarvar
CS: What was the first novel in the 100 Novels Project?
TY: The first novel was Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That was 204 pages typed on an IBM Selectric II in Los Angeles in February 2013. That’s the same typewriter that Thompson used to type his novel, and I continue to use the same type of typewriter as the writer used.
CS: How do you choose novels for the project?
TY: I pick only novels that were typed in the first place and only novels that I like. It’s interesting to me that the computer has not made typewriters obsolete. For example, Don DeLillo is still using a typewriter, and Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage, returned to the typewriter to avoid internet distractions. An American Marriage is the 82nd novel in this project. I used a Corona Silent, a Corona “Flattop,” and a Smith Corona Silent Super when I typed Jones’s 306-page novel at the Atlanta Contemporary.
CS: Can you describe the performance aspect of your project?
TY: I type each novel on a single sheet of drawing paper, which is backed by an additional support page. As I progress through the book, I continue to run the same two page “sandwich” through the typewriter. For a 300-page book, the paper probably makes 125-150 passes through the machine, getting overwritten each time. As you can imagine, the paper distresses as I go along. More often than not, the paper gets torn, ripped, punctured. Sometimes I have to patch it to keep it in shape enough to make it to the end. When I’m through the novel, I peel the two pages apart and mount them side-by-side in a diptych form. That’s the drawing. The entire novel is there, both a form artwork and evidence of my reading, and of course, it’s illegible.
Tim Youd, Dracula in Striking Characters, 2025, Schatten Gallery, Emory University, Photo: Bita Honarvar
CS: I searched Dracula and found 11 references to typewriters in the novel, which doesn’t surprise me since Stoker was fascinated with all kinds of new technology. Not only is Mina Harker associated with her typewriter, but a later novel (Lady Athlyne) features one of the first women to drive an automobile. Mina Harker seems to have picked up the typewriter so that she could help her lawyer husband establish himself in his new profession but also perhaps because she doesn’t seem to have enjoyed teaching. In fact, Stoker leads us to believe that Mina is responsible for assembling all the notes, newspaper clippings, and diary entries that eventually became the novel. It’s pretty clear to me that she uses a portable typewriter, too, since since she takes it with her when they track Dracula from London to Transylvania. How did you decide what typewriter to use?
TY: As part of this project, I own a number of vintage typewriters, but I had to work with an expert on antique typewriters to locate something close to what Stoker used. He analyzed keystrokes and used other forensic evidence to determine that Stoker probably used the Hammond when he typed the novel. However, because we couldn’t locate that exact model, I used the next best thing, a Hammond 12 (which came out in 1905) when I typed the novel.
CS: You can tell that I’m a word person since I’ve spent so much time on the typing aspect of the project. However, 100 Novels is also marvelously visual. Is it too obvious to ask why you used the red portion of a black and red typewriter ribbon?
TY: Well, how could I not! If any novel is blood red it’s Dracula.
CS: It certainly worked for me. Because Dracula is a comparatively long novel, the final result looks like a bloody rag. What made you think of presenting the retyped works as framed diptychs in the 100 Novels Project?
TY: One obvious reason is that the two sides resemble an open book. On one side is the ink covered sheet. On the other is the page that is embossed when the keys hit through the top sheet.
Tim Youd, Family of Ribbon Dragons, 2025, studio view courtesy of the artist
CS: Of course, the exhibit goes well beyond the novel. There are sculptures, paintings, collages, and three ribbon dragons as well as advertisements for typewriters from the Emory Archives and early television advertisements for typewriters. I realize that the Emory Archives staff made some of the decisions for how to organize all this material, including their decision to include typewriters owned by James Weldon Johnson, Jack Kerouac, and Raymond Andrews from Emory’s holdings. However, I’d like for you to explain how you arrived at the other visual aspects of the exhibit. Two of the most striking aspects of the exhibit are the ribbon dragons behind the space where you type for five to six hours a day and the paintings that often include images of typewriter spools. There’s no evidence from any of the Stoker biographies or from the very scholarly Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula, which was annotated and transcribed by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller, that Stoker knew that the word “Dracula” comes from the fact that Vlad II was made a member of the Order of the Dragon in 1431 by Sigismund of Luxembourg or that his son became Dracula, which means “son of Dracul.” Your choice of dragons as a backdrop is wonderful serendipity.
TY: The Dracula – Ribbon Dragon connection is indeed a great stroke. I’ll give credit to Rose Library curator Shanna Early for that. She and curator Hannah Griggs visited my studio with library director Clint Fluker in early 2025. I was working on my Ribbon Dragons at the time. Shanna said those must be included, because of that fact.
CS: That art is a process is as true of your 100 Novels Project, which you started in 2013, as it was for Dracula. When we read the Notes, we learn that the earliest dated note, which includes the word “Dracula,” was written on March 8, 1890, while Stoker and his wife and son spent a three-week holiday in Whitby. The novel itself wasn’t published until May 26, 1897. Because Stoker had a full-time job as business manager for the Lyceum Theater, he couldn’t devote full time to his writing. In fact, we don’t know how the final decision was made to title his novel Dracula or whether Stoker made that decision. The typed manuscript went to the publisher as The Undead. I’d still like to hear about your dragons, though, because they are such an interesting visual part of the exhibit.
TY: There are three ribbon dragons in the exhibit, a male, a female, and a baby made of layered corrugated cardboard painted with acrylic. The curved sculptures continue the same curved images that appear on the painted images of typewriter spools. However, dragons are also figures of mystery and power. I’m fascinated by what you tell me about the connection between Dracula and dragons even if Stoker wasn’t aware of that connection.
Tim Youd, 2025, installation view, Striking Characters, 2025, Schatten Gallery, Emory University
CS: In addition to the diptych, the painted typewriter spools, and the sculpted dragons (my personal favorite), the exhibit includes three of your Tree of Life works. Can you tell me a bit about them.
TY: The Tree of Life works are an ongoing project, and I have painted seventeen of them so far. These images are done with oil pastels on museum board and actually predate the dragons and the spools. Because the paint never dries, I can use a variety of tools, including various types of knives and a plastic broom, to scratch through the layers in the paintings. The Tree of Life comes from Norse mythology and represents the structure of myth that shapes stories. Once again, I am interested in art as a process, and the dragons, the typewriter spools, and the performance aspect of typing the novels all reinforce the process aspect of art.
CS: I know that most of the exhibits in the 100 Novels Project don’t include film though the Dracula exhibit does. Did you have anything to do with the film selections?
TY: The film loops and the film posters were the result of materials in Emory’s collection in the same way that the typewriter advertisements were. I do have a connection with film, however. When I left Wall Street (I graduated from Holy Cross with a B.S. in Economics), I moved to Hollywood to work in film and actually produced some independent films. However, the film work didn’t make me happy, so I gravitated toward a different kind of visual art. The decision to include film for the Dracula project makes sense, however, because Dracula has been filmed so often.
Tim Youd, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Striking Characters, 2025, Schatten Gallery, Emory University, Photo: Bita Honarvar
CS: That was a good decision so far as I’m concerned. You mentioned that retyping the novels has made you a better reader, and I appreciate the exhibit since it encouraged me to reexamine storytelling in general and Dracula in particular. Stoker may not have known about the connection to dragons, but he never went to Transylvania either, and readers and filmgoers continue to associate Dracula with Transylvania. Nonetheless, he produced a truly mythic work that encourages readers (and the viewers of various film adaptations) to re-examine so many primal forces, including sexuality and death. He may have thought of the novel as The Undead, but the novel lives on in multiple languages and multiple media. Your exhibit is part of that immortality.
I had the distinct pleasure of visiting this exhibit and of talking to you about it, and the photographs will help people reading this article to see what I saw. Is there anything I missed that you would like to share with readers? I’m especially curious to know whether it’s different to type on a nineteenth-century typewriter than it is to type on something more modern. I do know from personal experience that typing on a typewriter is much more physical than typing on a computer. However, I have really limited experience with multiple typewriter models.
TY: I’m glad you asked about the Hammond typewriter. Prior to the Dracula retyping, I had not used one of these machines, and it was fairly slow going for me, especially at first. For starters, you can’t see what you are typing. That’s a bit unsettling, although because my words are overwritten anyway, I was able to get used to it. I’m glad I got to use it, though. It was really a machine before its time, with a mechanism unlike the standard typewriter. One can swap out typefaces by changing a gasket. Keep in mind this is almost 100 years before the IBM Selectric and its interchangeable ball allowed for easy access to multiple typefaces. But the Hammond wasn’t a long-term commercial success, because, I surmise anyway, that it was too complex, too expensive to make, and too heavy for its time.
Tim Youd, Ribbon Dragons, 2025, studio view courtesy of the artist
Tim Youd is a Los Angeles performance and visual artist. Over the past 15 years, he has retyped 87 novels in his 100 Novels Project at various locations in the United States and Europe. He has been in residence at William Faulkner's Rowan Oak in Oxford, MS; Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia in Milledgeville, GA; Carson McCullers' Childhood Home in Columbus, GA; and Virginia Woolf's Monk's House in England. His work has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, including at the CAM St. Louis, the Atlanta Contemporary, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the MCA San Diego. In 2026, he has performances/exhibitions at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. In 2027, he is participating in the inaugural Bay Area Further Triennial, with a concurrent solo exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. He is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York.
Tim Youd
Carol Senf, Professor in School of Literature, Media and Communication at Georgia Tech, has researched Dracula for 50 years and written the book Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism and 17 articles, including “The Paradigm of Dracula: 100 Years of Evolution, ” “Dracula, Blood, and the New Woman,” “Blue Books, Baedekers, Cookbooks, and the Monsters in the Mirror: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
Carol Senf