TIN HOUSE FALL 2017 CATALOG fall 2017 catalog Contents The Tunnel at the End of the Light.............................................2 Kiss Me Someone...........................................................4 Grow Your Own..............................................................6 The Glass Eye...............................................................8 The Senator’s Children.......................................................10 The Journal of Jules Renard...................................................12 Tin House Magazine.........................................................14 Contact.and.Distribution.Information..........................................16 ESSAYS The.first.book.of.nonfiction. from.one.of.our.great. The Tunnel at the fiction.writers. End of the Light Essays by JIM SHEPARD iven that most Americans proudly Gconsider themselves nonpolitical, where do our notions of collective responsibility come from? Why do we believe, for example, that our country always means well when intervening abroad? And why do we defend that idea more fiercely than other nationalities? The Tunnel at the End of the Light argues that some of our most persistent and destructive assumptions, in that regard, might come from the movies. Shepard weaves close readings of film, cultural criticism, and personal essay to explore the ways in which movies work so ubiquitously to reflect how Americans think and act. He examines how we enter into conversations with specific genres and films— Chinatown, The Third Man, Lawrence of Arabia, and Badlands among others—in order to construct, refine, and circulate our most cherished illusions about ourselves. JIM SHEPARD is the author of seven novels, including The Book of Aron; five story SEPTEMBER collections, including 3 Like You’d Understand, $15.95.·.Trade.Paper.·.5".x.7 /4". Anyway—a finalist ISBN:.978-1-941040-72-0 ·.eBook:.978-1-941040-73-7 for the National Book Rights:.North.American Award and winner of The Story Prize—and editor of the anthology Writers at the Movies. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife, three PROMOTION & PUBLICITY children, and three beagles. He teaches at Williams •. Major.review.attention College. •. National.print.and.broadcast.features •. Events.in.Williamstown,.MA;.New.York,.NY;. Austin,.TX •. Outreach.to.film.publications.and.websites •. Library.marketing •. Advance.reading.copies 2 from JIM SHEPARD’S INTRODUCTION As anyone doing cultural criticism these days might have predicted, these essays are mostly about the power and resilience of the lies we tell ourselves as a collective. Movie genres emerged as a kind of implicit ongoing conversation between audiences voting with their feet and moviemakers doing what they could to standardize expectations and build on past successes. As those conversations became more refined, film genres began to appeal less to our experience of reality and more to the rules of the genres themselves; in other words, they created their own fields of reference. And is it possible to imagine an administration that would foreground that issue more spectacularly and urgently than our current one? We now confront a regime that presents as its public face hacks and sociopaths who have no trace of shame about lying directly in the face of contradictory evidence. Of course, in many ways the veteran political scientist’s response to that would be: so what’s new about that? Americans have been covertly demanding this for years, but recently a large percentage of us have come very close to just openly telling our leaders and media: Don’t tell me the truth anymore, and if you do, I’m going to get enraged. And now that’s earned us a government that has openly declared war on the free transfer of information and has set about punishing any allegiance to what it considers unpleasant truths. This is what empires do at the end: they refuse to face the facts that the world is changing, and they no longer have unlimited hegemonic power. And of course citizens are encouraged to refuse to face those facts by their leaders, who find denying the truth infinitely easier than answering questions about why they can’t change it. The models on display in these movies—the sentimental sociopath, suffused with self-pity; the feckless cipher bereft of any inner life who defines himself, then, by aggressive action; the isolated narcissist who imagines himself as a Hero in Disguise and takes as a matter of course his primacy over others; the movers and shakers who are now open and ebullient in their rapacity and ruthlessness; the megalomaniacs whose monstrous assurance steamrolls any doubt generated by the world of contradictory facts; the willed innocents who wreak havoc obliviously, with an outraged sense of their own virtue; and the ideologues who’ve been proven wrong time and time again but have reassured their supporters precisely by their inability to learn, by their insistence that they’re no wafflers—at this point they’re all mostly governing us, in both senses of the word. 3 PRAISE FOR KAREN SHEPARD “Karen Shepard’s characters vibrate with desire and disappointment, so obdurately individual that a whole world springs to life around them.” —ANDREA BARRETT, author of Ship Fever and The Air We Breathe “Shepard excels in the rendering of dailiness, with lovely moments of linkage between cultures.” —AMY HEMPEL, Bomb magazine “Not since Virginia Woolf have the snares and scars of familial relationships been rendered with such brilliance, sensitivity, and icy understatement.” —RON HANSEN, author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford “Riveting and deeply felt and true.” —DAVE EGGERS, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius “I love the way Shepard tells [a story] with a cool, deliciously cinematic eye . yet a warm and generous heart. Her characters will haunt me for some time to come.” —JULIA GLASS, author of Three Junes FICTION From.the.author.of.The Celestials,.a. collection.of.stories.that.will.appeal.to. readers.of.Lucia.Berlin,.Mary.Gaitskill,. Kiss Me Someone and.Mia.Alvar. Stories by KAREN SHEPARD old and unapologetic, Karen Shepard’s Kiss BMe Someone is inhabited by women who walk the line between two states: adolescence and adulthood, stability and uncertainty. They navigate the obstacles that come with mixed- race identity and the blending of social classes, and they use their in-between positions to leverage power. Sometimes this manifests as rage and sometimes as compassion—and often as sex—but it almost always comes in the form of self-destructive behavior. Shepard’s stories explore what we do to lessen the burden of sadness and isolation; her characters, fiercely true to themselves, are caught between their desire to move beyond that isolation and a fear that it’s exactly where they deserve to be. KAREN SHEPARD is a Chinese-American born and raised in New York City. She is the author of four novels, An Empire of Women, The Bad Boy’s SEPTEMBER 3 Wife, Don’t I Know You?, $19.95.·.Hardcover.·.5".x.7 /4".. and The Celestials. Her ISBN:.978-1-941040-75-1 ·.eBook:.978-1-941040-76-8 short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Rights:.North.American Monthly, Tin House, and Ploughshares, among oth- ers. Her nonfiction has appeared in More, Self, USA Today, and the Boston Globe, among others. She PROMOTION & PUBLICITY teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she lives with •. Major.review.and.feature.attention her husband, writer Jim Shepard, and their three •. Extensive.ARC.distribution.to.chains.and. children. indies •. Personal.essays.and.excerpts •. Author.appearances.in.Williams,.MA;.. Boston,.MA;.New.York,.NY;.Austin,.TX •. Author.appearances.throughout.Pacific. Northwest 5 NONFICTION Everything.a.home.grower.needs. to.understand,.cultivate,.and.enjoy. Grow Your Own cannabis.. by NICHOLE GRAF, MICAH SHERMAN, DAVID STEIN, & LIZ CRAIN s prohibition wanes, and cannabis A aficionados of all stripes come out from the shadows, the old stereotypes are fading. The benefits of cannabis are undeniable— medicinally, sure, but also for stress, for creativity, and for relaxation. And as any homebrewer, winemaker, or backyard gardener can tell you, there’s a particular joy in doing it yourself. Whether you’re new to cannabis and need to walk through the basics, or you’re an experienced grower looking to hone your techniques, Grow Your Own provides all the background and instruction you need to set up a grow space, raise your plants, and harvest your buds. It will teach you how to choose a strain based on its flavors and effects, how to manage insects and molds without the use of pesticides, and how to mix just the right soil. But Grow Your Own will also give you a primer on the myriad ways to enjoy cannabis—from carving an apple pipe to punching up your favorite brownie recipe. With photography, visual aids, and illustrations from Allen Crawford (Whitman SEPTEMBER Illuminated ), Grow Your Own makes 1 $26.95.·.Hardcover.·.7 /2".x.9". cultivating cannabis as accessible as it is rewarding. ISBN:.978-1-941040-58-4 ·.eBook:.978-1-941040-59-1 Rights:.World PROMOTION & PUBLICITY •. Color.illustrations.and.photographs •. National.media.interviews •. Print.and.online.features •. Social.media.campaign •. Author.appearances.throughout.Pacific. DAVID STEIN, NICHOLE GRAF , and MICAH Northwest SHERMAN are owners of Raven, a recreational cannabis company in Washington state that prides •. BLADs.for.wide.mailing.to.chains.. itself on producing environmentally and socially and.indies responsible organic cannabis and cannabis-infused products, and guaranteeing good vibes. LIZ CRAIN is the author of Toro Bravo: Stories. Recipes. No Bull and A Food Lover’s Guide to Portland. 6 Interview with NICHOLE GRAF, Creative Director at Raven TIN HOUSE: You left the fashion world and moved across the country to do something entirely different; what inspired that? NICHOLE GRAF: I was lucky to have a job in ready-to-wear fashion that encouraged creativity, innovation, and integrity of design. That said, I was hungry for a motivator that wasn’t entirely commerce driven—I just didn’t know how to combine all of these things I was feeling into a next move.