The Final Issue Is Big and Fat and Full of Goodies

TH80-Cover-800x1029 Some time around the Y2K scramble my daughter gifted me with a copy of Tin House Magazine: Issue 11 if I recall. Since then I have acquired and buried one wife, experienced one pesky stroke, gained a son-in-law and two delightful grand-children, read a few books, received social security, surrendered my driver’s license, and moved to northern Florida (certainly apostacy for a Southern California boy).

I filled in those earlier issues of Tin House and have several shelves next to my bed dedicated to all twenty years of the publication.

Sad to see it go.

featherline

Continue reading “The Final Issue Is Big and Fat and Full of Goodies” →

Spring Fling

It’s out: Tin House VOLUME 20, Number 3: Spring Fling

Over the past month, Valentina had attempted every procedure, from reputable to highly experimental. She’d bathed Lenin’s body in hydrogen peroxide and potassium acetate, employed benzene wipes, adjusted the dosages of intravenous polymer, applied refined paraffin wax in a thin layer over the face to maintain the appearance of skin, even resorted to botulinum. But the corpse had ceased all cooperation. After seventy years of successful maintenance, Lenin’s body was deteriorating faster than the morticians and biochemical scientists could keep up. Patchy dark spots bloomed across the dome of Lenin’s skull. His eye sockets collapsed like sinkholes. That morning, as Valentina inspected a gray fleshy protrusion on his temple, his left ear had fallen off into her hand like the handle on a poorly made clay mug. Most worryingly, there was a new smell about him. A damp, ghoulish, subterranean stench.

—MARIA LIOUTAIA, “Preservation”

Continue reading “Spring Fling” →

The End

I have an interesting track record with literary publications … they keep disappearing, often just after I renew my subscription. Unfortunately, in this case it is one of my very favorites. Tin House has accompanied me through many years of excellent reading.

I will miss it.

Dear Tin House Reader,

Tin House’s 20th Anniversary Issue, to be published in June 2019, will be the publication’s last. I’m grateful to Rob Spillman, Elissa Schappell, and Holly MacArthur, and the entire magazine staff, current and past, for their part in creating a vital, versatile outlet, and hosting important literary and cultural conversations over the past twenty years. It has been a remarkable run.

Continue reading “The End” →