Retyping “True Grit”

Experience artist Tim Youd’s meditative act of retyping novels one keystroke at a time. Over the course of 10 days, Youd continues his 100 Novels Project here at AMFA by retyping Charles Portis’s True Grit amongst the art on view in A Month of Sundays: Art and the Persistence of Time.

The 100 Novels Project is an ongoing performance artwork in which Youd retypes novels from beginning to end in locations that play a central role in the novels. By retyping True Grit in Little Rock – the city where Portis once lived and worked – Youd honors one of Arkansas’s most iconic literary voices, using endurance, focus, and time to reflect on and appreciate the novel’s enduring impact on American identity.

Drop by the Harriet and Warren Stephens Gallery to witness Youd’s practice up close! Retyping True Grit is ongoing from March 19 to 28, 2026.

Photo by Tracy Tucker.

About Tim Youd

Tim Youd (b. 1967, Worcester, MA) is a performance and visual artist working in painting, sculpture, and video. To date, he has retyped 84 novels at various locations in the United States and Europe. Residencies at historic writers’ homes have included William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak with the University of Mississippi Art Museum (Oxford, MS), Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia with SCAD (Milledgeville and Savannah, GA), Carson McCullers’ Childhood Home (Columbus, GA) and Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House (Rodmell, Sussex).

Youd’s work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions, including Atlanta Contemporary, CAMSTL, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Hanes Art Gallery at Wake Forest University, The New Orleans Museum of Art, Monterey Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the Lancaster Museum of Art and History.

He has presented and performed his 100 Novels Project at the Ackland Art Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Art Omi, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and LAXART, and retyped Joe Orton’s Collected Plays at The Queen’s Theatre with MOCA London.

Youd’s performances have been reviewed by The New York Times, Artforum, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, The Village Voice, The Art Newspaper, Interview, and a variety of other national and international publications. His studio is based in Los Angeles.

The Mid-South Cohort, a multi-year, multi-institutional exhibition partnership formed by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Fisk University Art Gallery, and the Mississippi Museum of Art, is made possible by the Art Bridges Cohort Program. This exhibition was organized by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.