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Tin House Launches Buy a Book, Save a Bookstore
Tin House Implements New Policy for Fall Reading Period. Unsolicited Submissions must be Accompanied by a Receipt for a Hardcover or Paperback from a Real-Life Bookstore
PORTLAND, OREGON (JUNE 30, 2010) In the spirit of discovering new talent as well as supporting established authors and the bookstores who support them, Tin House Books will accept unsolicited manuscripts dated between August 1 and November 30, 2010, as long as each submission is accompanied by a receipt for a book from a bookstore. Tin House magazine will require the same for unsolicited submissions sent between September 1 and December 30, 2010.
Writers who cannot afford to buy a book or cannot get to an actual bookstore are encouraged to explain why in haiku or one sentence (100 words or fewer). Tin House Books and Tin House magazine will consider the purchase of e-books as a substitute only if the writer explains: why he or she cannot go to his or her neighborhood bookstore, why he or she prefers digital reads, what device, and why.
Writers are invited to videotape, film, paint, photograph, animate, twitter, or memorialize in any way (that is logical and/or decipherable) the process of stepping into a bookstore and buying a book to send along for our possible amusement and/or use on our Web site.
Tin House Books will not accept electronic submissions. Tin House magazine will accept manuscripts by mail or digitally. The magazine will accept scans of bookstore receipts.
ALL MANUSCRIPTS WITHOUT RECEIPT OR EXPLANATION
WILL BE RETURNED UNREAD IN SASE.
Please send manuscripts to:
Save a Book
Tin House Books
2617 NW Thurman
Portland, OR 97210
Or
Save a Book
Tin House Magazine
PO Box 10500
Portland, OR 97210 ************
Douglas Bauer's essay, "What We Hunger For," an appreciation of M.F.K. Fisher from Tin House #36, will be included in Best Food Writing 2010, edited by Holly Hughes. Look for it from Da Capo Press in October.
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If you're headed to Book Expo America later this month, be sure to drop by the Tin House booth. We'll be there under the rather unflattering lights of the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan all day Wednesday, May 26th and Thursday, May 27th.
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Three Tin House pieces have won a place in The Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best of the Small Presses. Charles Baxter's "The Cousins" and Anthony Doerr's "The River Nemunas" (both from Issue #40) will appear along with Sigrid Nunez's essay "Sontag's Rules" (from Issue #41) in the 2011 edition of the long-running series. Look for the book to hit shelves in November.
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Guest editor Richard Russo has chosen four Tin House stories for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2010. The winners are "Donkey Greedy, Donkey Get Punched" by Steve Almond (from Issue #40); "The Cousins" by Charles Baxter (from Issue #40);"The Ascent" by Ron Rash (from Issue #39); and "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach" by Karen Russell (from Issue #41). Look for the book to hit stores in October from Mariner Books, and in the meantime, congratulations to these four fantastic writers!
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Natalie Bakopoulos's story "Fresco, Byzantine" from Tin House #37 was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2010. The anthology -- featuring work chosing by the prize jury of Junot Diaz, Paula Fox, and Yiyun Li -- is out now from Anchor Books. See here for more information.
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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Starting September 1, 2009, Tin House will resume reading for our Winter 2009 issue (although we recommend getting your submission in by September 30 to be considered for this issue). We would also like to announce our theme for Spring 2010: Games People Play We’re looking for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews revolving around the idea of play and sport. From poker to mind games to soccer, we want unique voices and ideas about games, play, and sport, from the personal to the cultural, from the inside and the outside, positive and negative, from within big-business sports to profiles of privately obsessive participants in willfully obscure games. At this stage (of the game, race, rally, inning, hand, match, set, clash, etc.) we are open to suggestions. The deadline for unsolicited submissions to this theme issue will be November 1.
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CONGRATULATIONS HEATHER!
Knock Knock, by Paris Editor Heather Hartley, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press in early 2010. ************
BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2009
The fine folks at Best American have selected three Tin House stories for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2009, guest-edited by Alice Sebold. The worthy winners are: “A Shadow Table” by Alice Fulton (Issue #36), “Hurricanes Anonymous” by Adam Johnson (Issue #36), and “One Dog Year” by Kevin Moffett (Issue #38). The anthology publishes in October. ************
NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH 2009
Kevin Wilson's story "No Joke, This Is Going To Be Painful" (from Issue #38) has been selected for inclusion in the 2009 volume of New Stories From the South, guest-edited by Madison Smartt Bell and publishing in August. ************
BEST AMERICAN FANTASY 2
Judy Budnitz's "Abroad" and Kelly Link's "Light," both from Issue #33, have been included in Best American Fantasy 2, out now from Prime Books. In their introduction, editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer write of our Fantastic Women issue: "All by itself it represents a kind of 'year's best,' from which we could easily have taken many more stories." ************
IMPORTANT UPDATE
Tin House is now accepting online submissions. We will also continue to accept submissions by mail. Our standard submission guidelines apply to both. We request that you read the guidelines carefully before following the link to our online submission manager. ************
TIN HOUSE MAGAZINE WRITERS GUIDELINES ADDITION
Writers' manuscripts must have the page number and the authors' names on each page, starting with the title page, as well as the word “end” on the final page of the submission. Further, on their cover letter, writers must indicate whether the story is fiction or nonfiction. For more guidelines, check http://www.tinhouse.com/mag/mag_submit.htm. **********
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Toni Morrison thinks you should read Agaat! She says, "[Agaat] is absolutely the most extraordinary book I've read in a long time. You must read it."
Mentor: A Memoir by Tom Grimes has been chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Selection!!!
A Publishers Weekly Starred Review for Agaat! "Clearly an allegory for race relations in South Africa, the novel succeeds on numerous other grounds: a rich evocation of family dynamics; a chilling portrait of bodily and mental decay; and a successful experiment in combining diaries, the second-person, and stream of consciousness."
Amazing Hot Springs review in The New York Times Book Review! "Geoffrey Becker's fantastic Hot Springs works hard to conceal its own scope and ambition, but the book's coyness (not to mention its humor) only heightens the uncanny, moving power of the question at its core: When it comes down to it, how far will people go for love?...Throughout the novel, characters ignore their own better judgments, creating a thrilling psychological drama that unfolds alongside the external events and creates space for the unexpected on virtually ever page. Becker has a gift for surprises...Becker's technical expertise and natural storytelling gifts are difficult to deny, as is his admirably muted sense of the absurd...Of all the reasons to be excited about Hot Springs, though, the book's strange and fresh treatment of love itself is the best...it's a taut meditation on letting go and a convincing reminder that love, for all the destruction it can cause, can usually rebuild just about anything."
A Publishers Weekly Starred Review for Hot Springs
". . . a remarkably taut narrative and a rousing testament to humanity's capacity for resilience. Nobody gets off the hook, though they do find uneasy deliverance in unexpected places."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
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 readable…[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
Hot Springs in ELLE!
"In Hot Springs, his rollicking new novel, Geoffrey Becker has assembled a delicate collage of damaged souls...Becker gives them to us with such earnest and empathetic insight that he makes us root for even the most ungracious among them."—Rachel Rosenblit, ELLE
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
Asta in the Wings is a 2009 Booklist Editor's Choice for Best Adult Book for Young Adults!
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 New York Times Book Review loves Erased!
“Smart and funny...Krusoe is an engaging writer and an acute observer of his own brand of quotidian strangeness...Krusoe's witty book, for all its drifting in the slipstream of realistic narrative, ends up being, in the old and honest and satisfying sense, familiar.”—John Haskell, The New York Times Book Review
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
Jim Krusoe, author of Girl Factory and Erased, is a finalist for the St. Francis College Literary Award!
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
See more news from Tin House Books at our NEW SITE.
When I Forgot by Elina Hirvonen made The New York Times Editor's Choice List. "Potent, fragile and tender, “When I Forgot” is really the story of “When I Remembered,” of a woman summoning the courage to unlock her memories and share them, and feeling the relief of exhaling a breath held too long." — Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review (cover) Check out the complete review here.
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
Zak Smith's We Did Porn found a UK home at Beautiful Books. Smith's memoir and drawings will be available across the pond October 9!
Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson was made a Spring-Summer 2009 Indie Reading Group selection by IndieBound!
November 22, 1963 by Adam Braver is a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones award for fiction!
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
Jim Krusoe's Girl Factory was nominated for the 2008 Believer Book Award!
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
Adam Braver's November 22, 1963 reviewed in Los Angeles Times Book Review “Braver is a terrific writer, an observer of the most acute details; throughout the book, he traces the subtle interactions of his characters as they collide and move apart. One of the most moving interactions here takes place between Jackie and an ambulance driver named Al Rike as they share cigarettes outside the trauma room where her husband's body lies...in this tiny glimmer of connection, whole universes of emotion are uncovered.”—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book 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.'"
The Journal of Jules Renard Featured in the Los Angeles Times Book Review!
"Jules Renard's endlessly amusing journals are available again, and whether read straight through or dipped into at random, they're a marvel to behold...readers of this work are certainly encouraged to laugh throughout at his singularly savage wit."—Tayt Harlin, Los Angeles Times Book Review Read full review
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).
Two Starred Reviews for The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris
"As each chapter shifts from one voice to the next, Morris cranks up the tension so that by the time the dart match arrives, the book is impossible to put down. Morris explores how even the most banal choices we make—to get in the car or not?—can have a life-altering impact."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review and Pick of the Week
"Secrets and surprises are revealed as the narrative shifts among the five voices, injecting the culminating chapters with an almost unbearable tension. All the while, Morris continues to draw a subtle, near flawless portrait of the unique ways that small-town life can both nurture and suffocate its residents."— Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist, Starred Review
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
Girl Factory gets rave review in The New York Times Book Review
"In his delightful second novel, Girl Factory, Jim Krusoe manages to take lowly yogurt to new heights of repugnance...As with the best kind of horror story, Girl Factory occurs in a seemingly ordinary setting, and it's precisely the clash of the mundane with the horrific that the makes the narrative so absorbing."—Julia Scheeres, New York Times Book Review
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
"DESPICABLE" says New York Magazine The arbiter of taste for all things...New Yorky, has decreed in its Approval Matrix that the cover of Do Me, Tin House Book's anthology of Tales of Sex and Love, is indeed despicable. That is "Highbrow Depsicable," however, not "Lowbrow."
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!
Publisher's Weekly reviews Saving Angelfish, by Michele Matheson: Matheson's promising debut, a gritty novel from Tin House Books' New Voice Series, tells the bleak story of a wayward L.A. junkie named Max. Virtually disowned by her dysfunctional parents, out of a job, sickeningly underweight, months behind on rent and unable to kick her debilitating heroin habit, Max flits from day to depressing day in a constant state of decrepitude. When she's not shooting up, she's snorting coke, and when she's not doing that she's thinking about her next fix. Despite her spiraling decline and a number of near-death experiences, nothing really changes for Max throughout her story. Her dealers (Grandpops, her crusty, repulsive landlord; and Carlotta, a beastly legless woman) and fellow junkies (Wolf and a roller-skating waif named Tutu) share Max's single-minded pursuit of getting high. Though initially mesmerizing, the drug-centric plot begins to ware a little thin; the crux of the book can be found in Max's unchanging attitude toward her life: "The goal is not to think-about anything. She winds up places, and that's fine." Nonetheless, Matheson's sharp, highly detailed prose thrusts readers in the driver's seat of an out-of-control life. *********
LOS ANGELES TIMES NEW DISCOVERIES! Food & Booze:
Essays and Recipes Edited by Michelle Wildgen, illustrated by Nicole J. Georges, Tin House Books: 226 pp., $16.95 “MOSTLY booze. Thank God. Maybe it's coming back. Or maybe it's just that, as Chris Offut writes in his contribution to this marvelous essay collection, "[t]here are two kinds of writers, you will hear people say, the ones who drink and the ones who quit." Then again, Offut's recipe is for baked possum; who wouldn't rather have a drink? Elissa Schappell, in "Ode to a Martini," quotes Dorothy Parker: "I like to have a martini / Two at the very most / After three I'm under the table, / After four I'm under my host." Lydia Davis, in "Eating Fish Alone" (one imagines a raccoon washing its paws in the river and looking anxiously about), provides a recipe for a smelly sardine sandwich. Sara Perry's essay on the apple is a walk in the park that begins with Eve, moves through Alice B. Toklas and ends with an uplifting recipe for pâte brisée and several versions of pie. "My first loaf sucks," reports Matthew Batt in "The Path of Righteousness," on his efforts at sourdough bread ("a Quonset-shaped loaf of despair"). "I feel like a soiled, unfaithful, pathetic man" ˜ this after having attempted a "nice brown sauce," inspired by Julia Child. These essays are pure fun, pure joy, every last honey-colored, 80-proof, diet-be-damned one of them ˜ and excellent attitude training for the coming holidays.” **********
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