Tim Sinclair has spent most of his life in the Adelaide Hills district although he has also lived in Japan, Scotland, Malaysia and the USA. As of 2017, he was resident in Sydney.
He began publishing poetry in journals and magazines in the late 1990s. His poetry collection Vapour Trails was released in 2004. He is also the author of two novels, including the verse novel Nine Hours North, and a multimedia verse novel / concept album, Brothers of the Head. He is the founder of Cottage Industry Press, which published some of his earlier works; his 2013 young-adult thriller Run was released by Penguin.
He once worked at the Adelaide Festival of Arts -- erecting Hills clothes hoists -- and has had a variety of other jobs including building sets, painting roofs and teaching ESL in Japan. He has also worked extensively in arts administration, including for SA Writers’ Centre (Adelaide), Poets House (New York), and at The Australian Society of Authors (Sydney).
Sinclair holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide, on young adult post-apocalyptic fiction. He has been longlisted for the Red Room Poetry Fellowship and the Joanne Burns Award.