Possum Living is EVERYWHERE!!!!

"...this book will not only make you laugh but might actually inspire you to embrace a simpler life."--O, The Oprah Magazine

"Compulsively readab...[T]his strange, engaging hymn to the laid-back life now, in 2010, one message comes out loud and clear. As the 18-year-old sage Dolly Freed wrote: 'I refuse to spend the first 60 years of my life worrying about the last 20.'"--The New York Times Art Beat
 
"Dolly Freed is my hero...[If] this smart, engaging, funny, and frank manifesto...doesn't make you want to quit the rat race at least a little bit, then you must be one big, fat rat."--Vice Magazine

Rasskazy Reviewed in The Globe and Mail

"...these stories are about alienation and displacement...at least some Russians are still reading--not only themselves but their classics--as they write themselves out of cultural amnesia."--Maxim D. Shrayer, The Globe and Mail

Tin House Books is all over The Los Angeles Times!!!

The Story About the Story
"Gathering 31 essays, this book offers nothing less than a crash course in literature, as taught by some serious talent."--The Los Angeles Times

The Children's Day
"...rich language...splendid characters...Heyns' story goes beyond Simon's coming-of-age and broaches something much bigger: society's own struggles with coming-of-age."--Amy Wallen, The Los Angeles Times

Erased
"...this novel has the power to draw us into its bizarre world...Krusoe reminds us that the best prescription for bereavement might just be a healthy dose of action. That better place is just around the next corner."--George Ducker, The Los Angeles Times

The Wall Street Journal reviews The Children's Day by Michiel Heyns.

"...fascinating...The result of his insistent moralism is a complex, destructive, angst-inspiring denouement that neatly captures, metaphorically, the corruptions, confusion and hypocrisy of the surrounding society. Mr. Heyns's novel deserves a wide readership."--Martin Rubin, The Wall Street Journal

Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia receives a great review in Publishers Weekly.

"The current state of Russian identity--artistic, political, social and beyond--is vigorously examined in this anthology, offering readers a multifaceted portrait of the complex nation, from short, poetic pieces like Oleg Zobern's 'Bregovich's Sixth Journey,' to nearly journalistic narratives like Arkady Babchenko's powerful and harrowing remembrance of the Chechen war ('The Diesel Stop'). The dreams and fears of young and old are included--Roman Senchin's 'History' follows a retired and politically indifferent professor who gets caught up in a mass arrest of protesters and subsequently must wake up to the oppressive realities of his country, and Anna Starobinet's 'Rules' is a whimsical and poignant sketch of a frighteningly perceptive boy. The editors point out that the stories 'fall broadly into the category of what can be referred to as New Russian Realism.' This realism, though, leaves plenty of room for surreal and dryly humorous perspectives (such as Kirill Ryabov's 'Spit' and Vadim Kalinin's 'The Unbelievable and Tragic Story of Misha Shtrikov and His Cruel Wife'). This is a truly diverse series of revelations."
--Publishers Weekly

The New York Times Mentions The Writer's Notebook in an article about creative writing workshops.

"Much more entertaining is The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays From Tin House, which is a pretty fair summary of where actual writing instruction is at these days. Most of the essays originated in writing workshops run by the literary magazine Tin House, and they include advice on sex writing by Steve Almond, on what you can learn from Shakespeare by Margot Livesey, and on revision by Chris Offutt, who compares the process to 'draining the kitchen sink and seeing what's in there, which is usually a mess.'"
−Charles McGrath, The New York Times

Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson was made a Spring-Summer 2009 Indie Reading Group selection by IndieBound!

Two Tin House titles, November 22, 1963 and Asta in the Wings, reviewed in Library Journal.

"Verdict: Braver's use of multiple viewpoints, engaging personal insight, and short blocks of prose propel readers through this impressive example of historical fiction; highly recommended for public libraries and academic fiction collections. Background: In Braver's skillful re-imagining of the day of JFK's assassination, readers follow a string of independent narratives told from the perspectives of, among others, a Dallas police officer, a funeral hearse driver, a parade bystander, a White House nanny, and a staff usher. Each individual expresses his or her experience succinctly and with an austerity that heightens our emotional investment. Jackie Kennedy's sense of shock and loss act as literary bookends"−Library Journal, Dora Wagner

"This debut is a story of what happens when the outside world discovers that a widowed mother in Maine has removed her two children, seven-year-old Asta and her nine-year-old brother, Orion, from any contact with the outside world. Unaware that their mother is delusional, the two children do not feel deprived under her care, appreciating her for what she is able to provide. When their isolated living situation is discovered, the children find themselves at the mercy of kind yet sometimes misguided adults. Asta emerges as the stronger, more communicative child. Bright and sometimes wily, she remains steadfastly devoted to her gifted yet now mute brother. This she somehow manages while attempting to adjust to both home and school by herself, as the two children now live apart. The narrative is told from Asta's perspective, and initially the tone is eerie and unsettling. As the story unfolds, the situation feels less threatening and even incorporates elements of humor. An unusual novel; recommended for larger public libraries."−Library Journal, Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ

Two starred reviews for Asta in the Wings!!

"With this, her excellent debut novel, Watson makes quick work of a setup that could prove challenging for even seasoned authors. Seven-year-old Asta grows up in rural Maine in the late 1970s, where she and her sickly nine-year-old brother, Orion, are kept locked in their house by their crazy mother, who fills their heads with tales of the plague-ravaged wasteland waiting outside their door. Equipped with little beyond what their mother provides, the children are wildly creative, surprisingly intelligent and share a deep bond with each other. But when their mother disappears and the two venture outside, they face the real world and real people for the first time. As Asta processes what's going on and is separated from her brother, she's reluctant to recognize what was wrong with her previous life. Asta's narration is full of the wonderment and matter-of-factness of youth, and her eye-opening trip into reality is flawlessly executed by Watson."−Publishers Weekly, Starred Review 12/1/08

"In this extraordinary debut novel, seven-year-old Asta and her malnourished nine-year-old brother, Orion, who live in a small town in Maine, have long been isolated from the outside world. Told by their mother that a plague has devastated the world, they have not set foot outside the house in years, although the two have formed a deep bond based on their richly imaginative play. Then their mother fails to come home from work, and the siblings set out to look for her. Watson vividly renders their first contact with others, including a surly store clerk, a pack of mean-spirited schoolchildren, and a kindly bus driver, from Asta's awestruck perspective as she slowly comes to grips with the fact that everything her mother told her was a lie. She is unwilling to acknowledge, at first, that there was anything amiss in her family life, although she is quick to perceive that people do not treat her with nearly the same careful attentiveness as her brother does. Sensitive and intelligent, Asta struggles to reconcile her familial loyalty with her new reality. A cleverly constructed, beautifully written first novel from a gifted new writer."−Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist, Starred Review

A Starred Review from Publishers Weekly for Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House

"In this beautiful anthology, the poetry editors of the literary journal Tin House have cherry-picked from the magazine's past contributors. Representing the establishment are venerable poets such as Sharon Olds, Charles Simic and Donald Hall. Hall's poems are heartbreaking meditations on loss, containing the ghostlike presence of his late wife and muse, the poet Jane Kenyon: 'The months of absence hurry./In sleep I touch her skin/And wake in the stain of dawn, in fury.' Among the younger poets are two who continue to draw wider attention: Matthea Harvey, who has a brilliant knack for whimsically relaying the everyday oddity of the contemporary world, and Christian Hawkey, who conveys some of the widespread feeling of helplessness: 'I will sit down in the middle of an intersection.../ & pour gasoline over my head,/ & gaze up at the clean white object of a gathering cloud.' Poetry in translation also has a strong presence, through Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska and the late Yehuda Amichai, among others. Also adhering to the magazine's dictum to showcase both the very well known beside up and comers, this book gathers poems that are never self-indulgent, occasionally political, often intimate and in many cases timely, both universal and approachable, such as the title poem by Ben Doller: 'When I bend back to look at the satellite convulsions, I/ am an aqueduct for twilit rain.'"

Human Resources: We Have a Winner!

Human Resources by Josh Goldfaden has been awarded the 2008 Devil's Kitchen Fiction Prize. As part of the award, Goldfaden will read at the Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival put on by Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His reading will be on Friday, October 24 at 5:00 pm.

"Looking at Animals," a story from Human Resources, was awarded the Lytle Fiction prize for being the best short story to appear in the Sewanee Review in 2007.

And Human Resources was also shortlisted for the 2007 Story Prize (http://www.thestoryprize.org/2007_short_list.html).

ELLE loves Lucia Nevai's Salvation!

"Crane is also, by way of Nevai's humor and preternatural stylistic gifts, the kind of self-effacing, wickedly wise, subtly superior organic genius that we all long for in a protagonist...Salvation's impossibly satisfying pearls begin arriving like rocks in an avalanche−one barely leaving its impression on you before another lands."−Rachel Rosenblit, ELLE

Book Forum reviews Girl Factory, by Jim Krusoe:

As strangely whimsical as it is macabre, this tale could easily have become an on-the-run-from-the-law picaresque or an animal rights satire, but in Krusoe's spirited hands it humbly fades into the backdrop, as the real story, far more sinister and equally madcap, unfolds...he is never heavy-handed−his writing is too unpretentious, his characters too wonderfully peculiar...We never learn, for instance, who the women are or how they came to be in their tubes. But this, too, underscores one of Krusoe's themes: that life, unlike most stories, leaves so much unknowable. And this makes Girl Factory the best kind of novel−a wildly imagined tale with its own rules. A word of warning, however: You may never look at your yogurt the same way again. Read the full review

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Literary Arts just announced the winners of the 2007 Oregon Book Awards and Lee Montgomery, Editorial Director of Tin House Books and Executive Editor of Tin House was the winner of the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction for her memoir The Things Between Us (Free Press).

One of the judges, Lee Gutkind, described Montgomery's work as "vivid and riveting like cinema" and praised her ability to craft "real-life characters with evocative sensitivity."

Congratulations to Lee!