METAPHOR WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE, by J.C. Hallman
This week, we’ve had the privilege of hosting J.C. Hallman at the Tin House Writer’s Workshop. You think he’d be busy plugging his new book IN UTOPIA (out August 3rd), but he’s made some time to continue the crusade he began with THE STORY ABOUT THE STORY: GREAT WRITERS EXPLORE GREAT LITERATURE.
Just the other [...]
Live From Reed College
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Tin House Summer Writers Workshop-On the pitch for eight years running
By Lance Cleland
Like many of you, we here at Tin House have been obsessing over the World Cup. Accompanied by the blissful sounds of sixty thousand Vuvuzelas, blasting from the television bar at seven in the morning, we have been watching all the blown calls, beautiful goals, and culturally informative hairstyles with the [...]
Studio 360 Interview w/ Marlene van Niekerk
Certain public radio affiliates (I’m looking at you OPB) aren’t fortunate enough to carry Studio 360. Thankfully, they’re kind enough to share their content online. Listen to Kurt Anderson interview Marlene van Niekerk about her novel Agaat. (Bonus: Kurt will teach you how to pronounce it)
And soccer fans, think the vuvuzela horn is The Worst [...]
Suggestion Box (Please Help)
Dearest Readers,
We can’t thank you enough for your support over the years–you read our magazine, you buy our books, you attend our workshops. And we’d like to give back to you–we really would. We want to look to the future and continue to innovate; we want move you with the stories, poems, and books we [...]
“I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.”
David Markson passed away this week at age 82. In our 10th-Anniversary issue, our own Rob Spillman wrote a tribute to Markson, and particularly his later novels. As anyone who’s had the pleasure of reading his work knows, he’ll be sorely missed.
David Markson is going down fighting, and he’s not giving an inch to convention, [...]
Fathers and Sons
The perfect gift for the men in your life, The Tin House Father-and-Son pack includes The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto and How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself.
-One part celebration, one part history, two parts manifesto, Bernard DeVoto’s The Hour is a comic and unequivocal treatise on how and why we drink—properly. The Pulitzer Prize and [...]
True To How I Am In The World: An Interview With David Shields
By Jay Ponteri
NOTE: A slightly abridged version of this interview appears in the print edition of Issue #44. The complete, unabridged interview is an online exclusive.
In 1996, David Shields published his first book of nonfiction, Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity. Since then—six nonfiction books later—Shields has helped to reconfigure the essay form by enlarging [...]
“(Agaat) is absolutely the most extraordinary book I’ve read in a long time. You must read it.” -Toni Morrison
Marlene van Niekerk talks with Toni Morrison and K. Anthony Appiah about Agaat. (via Pen World Voices)
Agaat in Translation
The always-fantastic Words Without Borders published an interview with Michiel Heyns, who, besides being a talented author in his own right, translated our forthcoming tour-de-force, Agaat, by Marlene van Niekerk. Heyns interlocutor, Dedi Felman, graciously allowed us to run an excerpt from the piece. We couldn’t be more excited about publishing Agaat. We’ve recently become [...]
Live Twitter-Cast, AWP 2010
For those of you who didn’t make it to Denver, you can follow our live Twitter stream. Those here, use an #AWP10 tag to tell those suckers back home who you’re drinking with at the hotel bar. We’re in booth 513 if you’d like to stop by and compliment Cheston’s hair.
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Call It Whatever The @*#& You Want!
Keith Lee Morris’s new collection CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT will be popping up at your local bookstore/preferred internet retailer this week. Keith has been kind enough to give our readers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into choosing a title, or lack thereof:
Let’s talk about what a pain in the butt it is to [...]
Good Night, and Good Luck (Not Stabbing Your Toe)
Kind of like an author appearing on Oprah today (if she were a chain smoker). Edward R. Murrow talks to Robert Paul Smith about HOW TO DO NOTHING WITH NOBODY ALL ALONE BY YOURSELF, his classic 1950’s compendium of cool stuff for kids to do. If you want to be the favorite parent, or aunt, [...]
Spaceman, Pancakes, Beer, and Steak
Tin House’s Games People Play issue hits stands this week, just in time for baseball’s spring training. Among new fiction by Jennifer Egan, poetry from Matthew Zapruder, and essays by Tom Bissell and Karen Russell, writer Brian James Barr unearths the memoirs of Bill “The Spaceman” Lee, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and [...]
Barry Hannah, 1942-2010
One of our great writers, Barry Hannah, died yesterday at age 67. Tin House had the privilege of publishing an interview last summer, conducted by Tom Franklin. They discussed Hannah’s vast body of work, his illness, fishing, and firearms. At one point, Franklin asked if shooting, a hobby of Hannah’s, got him closer to his [...]
Tin House Summer Writers Workshop: Infomercial #1
Lance Cleland’s new series of posts designed to make you salivate for warmer weather, gross Sacramento-style beer cocktails, and–most importantly–the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop.
We tend to get a little ahead of ourselves here in Portland. The sun shines for a day, a few flowers in the courtyard bloom, and suddenly every lumberjack with a [...]
HOWTODONOTHING.NET
Our friends over at Think/Make have just helped us launch a website for Robert Paul Smith’s classic How To Do Nothing With Nobody All Alone By Yourself. Read an excerpt, watch Smith’s interview with Edward R. Murrow, and submit your own ideas/projects. Check it out at www.howtodonothing.net. You can also follow the HowToNothing Twitter Feed.
Hyperlinks From Around The Interwebs
A semi-regular roundup of stuff we like from the internets and youtubes:
Our own Zak Smith has a blog about playing Dungeon’s and Dragons with Porn Stars. It’s called “Playing D&D With Porn Stars.” Take the quiz and see if you can guess whether Sasha Grey is a Half-Orc Wizard or a Dark-Elf Cleric. NSFW (if [...]
D. A. Powell, Congrats!
Calling all students of poetry:
Tin House Summer Writers Workshop faculty member, D. A. Powell recently won the prestigious Kingsley Tufts award for his fantastic collection, Chronic. We’re all excited to have him back to Portland this summer!
In the off chance you’re still wondering whether you should apply to study with him this summer, we dug [...]
Hyperlinks From Around The Interwebs
A semi-regular roundup of stuff we like from the internets and youtubes:
-Dolly Freed has been blogging for Powells this week. If you ever wanted to know how to prepare that bird that kamikazeed into your window, now’s your chance.
-Poet Heather Christie is doing a live reading/Q&A tonight at htmlgiant. She won me over last time [...]
The Rumpus: One Year Later
In the last year, two literary websites have fought their way onto that “top sites” screen that pops up when I open a new window in Safari–The Rumpus and HTMLGIANT. Both have fantastic original content, links I’m generally thankful I’ve clicked on, worthwhile discussions in the comments threads, and a fierce devotion to independent literature. [...]
Dolly Freed, Blogger
Dolly Freed–who you might have seen here, or here, or here, or here–hadn’t been heard from for awhile (for the whole story, check out Paige Williams’ piece, “Finding Dolly Freed“). All that has changed. Dolly’s been kind enough to give up her dial-up connection and has begun blogging at her new website. I’ve included her [...]
Oprah and Vice, Respectively
What do these two magazines have in common? So far as I can tell…Nothing. Well, almost nothing. While their editorial positions on merkins may differ, they’re both enthusiastic about Dolly Freed’s Possum Living:
The Vice Interview
The O Magazine Review
Staff Picks, Best of the Decade: Literary Biographies
If you’re able to carve enough time out of your hectic holiday season for some lengthy reading, Nanci “Knuckles” McCloskey has, as a prelude to her best-of-the-decade list, composed a voluminous dialectic concerning the importance of the literary biography. The author deftly examines her compulsion toward the form, while acknowledging the enigma of how and why one [...]
Staff Picks, Best of the Decade: Stories Haunted by Creepy Little Girls
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has more capacity for creepiness than a little girl. Just a quick glance at that Diane Arbus photo will give me nightmares for weeks. Thankfully, Editor Meg Storey has come through with a list of stories that I should avoid reading at all cost–or at least attempt to block from my memory. [...]
The Green Movement’s Dark Side
“A Good Without Light” is an excerpt from Curtis White’s new book, The Barbaric Heart, and appears in the Hope/Dread issue of Tin House. White will be appearing at the third installment of our Disjecta reading/music series Saturday the 21st at 7 pm, along with the poet David Biespiel. Adrian Orange & the Child Slave [...]
Up and coming story writer Seth Fried made this after hearing we’ll be publishing a story of his in the Spring.
Expect more of this kind of thing from us in the future. Maybe even audio samples from “Bad Dudes” or “RBI:Baseball.”
Curtis White: A Good Without Light
Curtis White’s intelligence, colored by righteous indignation, is a slippery and protean thing. He’s tackled Liberalism and contemporary Art Culture and in his newest book, The Barbaric Heart, he examines the hidden ills of the environmental movement. We were fortunate enough to publish an excerpt of it in the “Dread” half of Issue #41, called [...]
CORY DOCTOROW: RADICAL PRESENTISM
Tin House #41 should be hitting your mailboxes or newsstand any day now. The dual theme is Hope/Dread (our designer, the fabulous Janet Parker, created stunning covers for each). In the dread corner, look for Nick Cave, Ander Monson, Alex Lemon, Matthea Harvey, and other doomsayers. Flying the colors of hope, we have Karen Russell, Abigail Thomas, Mahmoud Darwish, [...]
THE DISCIPLINED SOUL
The essays in The Story About the Story differ from traditional literary criticism in many ways. They contemplate rather than argue. They do not artificially sublimate subjectivity. They preserve mystery instead of dissecting it. And often they expand the scope of what they are willing to address so as to speak to the basics—the history, [...]
