Authors
Katie Arnold-RatliffKatie Arnold-Ratliff received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is on the editorial staff of O, the Oprah Magazine, where her writing appears regularly. She lives in New York.
Title(s): Bright Before Us
Gwenaëlle AubryA novelist and a philosopher, Gwenaëlle Aubry studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and Trinity College in Cambridge. She published her first novel, Le diable détacheur (Actes Sud), in 1999, followed in 2002 and 2003 by L’Isolée (Stock) et L’Isolement (Stock) and Notre vie s’use en transfigurations (Actes Sud, 2007), written while in residency at the Villa Medicis in Rome. She is also the author of several nonfiction works including a translation of a treatise by Plotinus. In 2009, she won the Prix Femina for No One.
Title(s) No One
Christopher R. BehaChristopher R. Beha is an associate editor at Harper’s Magazine and the author of a memoir, The Whole Five Feet. He contributes frequently to the New York Times Book Review. What Happened to Sophie Wilder is his first novel.
Title(s) What Happened to Sophie Wilder
Geoffrey BeckerGeoffrey Becker’s book of stories Black Elvis won the 2008 Flannery O’ConnorPrize for Fiction and will be published by the University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2009. He is the author of two previous books, Dangerous Men, a short story collection that won the Drue Heinz Prize, and Bluestown, a novel. His other awards and honors include an NEA fellowship, selection for the Best American Short Stories anthology, the Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune, and the Parthenon Prize. He teaches writing at Towson University in Maryland, where he also directs the graduate program in professional writing.
Title(s): Hot Springs
Mahi BinebineMahi Binebine was born in Marrakech in 1959. He studied in Paris and taught mathematics, until he became recognized first as a painter, then as a novelist. Binebine lived in New York in the late 1990s, when his paintings began to be acquired by the Guggenheim Museum..
Titles(s): Welcome to Paradise 
Karen Lee BorenKaren Lee Boren received her MFA from Wichita State University and a PhD in English at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She teaches literature and creative writing at Rhode Island College. Her fiction has appeared in the Florida Review, Night Train, Karamu, Hawai’i PacificReview, and Dominion Review. Her nonfiction has appeared in Cream City Review and the Lonely Planet anthology Rite of Passage: Tales of Backpacking ’Round Europe.
Title(s): Girls in Peril
Adam BraverAdam Braver is the author of Mr. Lincoln’s Wars, Divine Sarah, and Crows Over the Wheatfield. His work has appeared in journals such as Daedalus, Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Water-Stone Review, West Branch, andPost Road. He teaches at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and is a writer-in-residence at the NY State Summer Writers Institute. He lives in Cranston, Rhode Island.
Title(s): November 22, 1963, Misfit - William Wallace CookWIlliam Wallace Cook was born in Marshall, MI in 1867. He was the author of dozens of westerns and science-fiction novels, many of which were adapted into films, as well as a memoir, The Fiction Factory. He was nicknamed “the man who deforested Canada” for the volume of stories he fed into the old pulp-magazine mill. He spent five years composing Plotto before finally publishing it in 1928. Cook died in his hometown of Marshall in 1933.
Titles(s): Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots
Lucy CorinLucy Corin’s short stories have been published in numerous journals, including Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Mid-American Review, andConjunctions, and anthologized in the collections The Iowa Anthology of Innovative Fiction (Iowa University Press, 1994) and New Stories for the South: The Year’s Best (Algonquin Books, 1997 and 2003). Her novel,Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls was published by FC2 in 2004. Currently, she teaches English at the University of California, Davis.
Title(s): The Entire Predicament
Bernard DeVotoBernard DeVoto was an author, literary critic, and historian. In 1948, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Across the Wide Missouri, and in 1953 he won the National Book Award for The Course of Empire. From 1935 onward he wrote a regular column, The Easy Chair, for Harper’s Magazine. He served as curator for the papers of Mark Twain, and gained popularity for his abridged version of the journals of Lewis and Clark. He was a champion of public lands and the conservation of natural resources, as well as an adamant defender of civil liberties.
Title(s): The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto
CJ EvansCJ Evans is the author of The Category of Outcast, selected by Terrance Hayes for the Poetry Society of America’s New York Chapbook Fellowship. His work has appeared in journals such as Boston Review, Colorado Review, Open City, Virginia Quarterly Review, Web Conjunctions. He is the managing editor of two lines: World Writing in Translation and a contributing editor for Tin House.
Title(s): Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House
Harriet FasenfastHarriet Fasenfest, author of A Householder’s Guide to the Universe, is an avid gardener, food preserver, homemaker, and lover of the soil. Born and raised in the Bronx, Fasenfest currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, two sons, and the occasional “stranger.” At fifty-six, Harriet officially fled Main Street (and her restaurants) for the greener pastures of the backyard, where she teaches classes on householding.
Title(s): A Householder’s Guide to the Universe
- John FrancJohn Franc lives in North America with his wife and family. He has traveled extensively.
Title(s): Hooked
Dolly FreedFollowing her success as an author, Dolly Freed grew up to be a NASA aerospace engineer. She put herself through college after she aced the SATs with an education she received from the public library. She has also been an environmental educator, business owner, and college professor. She lives in Texas with her husband and two children.
Title(s):Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money
Josh GoldfadenJosh Goldfaden’s stories have appeared in the journals Meridian, Mid-American Review, New England Review, Salmagundi, the Sewanee Review, ZYZZYVA, and others. Currently at work on a novel, he operates the website design/management company WebAha! (www.webaha.com) with his wife, the poet Jennifer Chapis. He lives in Oceanside, California.
Title(s) Human Resources
Tom GrimesTom Grimes is the author of five novels, a play, and most recently, Mentor: A Memoir. He edited The Workshop: Seven Decades of Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Texas State University.
Title(s): Mentor: A Memoir
Anouchka GroseAnouchka Grose was born in Sydney, Australia, but has lived in London most of her life. She is currently a writer and psychoanalyst, but has also worked as a musician, receptionist, editor, jewelry designer, and lampshade maker. She has published two novels, Darling Daisy and Ringing for You.
Title(s): Why Do Fools Fall in Love: A Realist Guide to Romance
J. C. HallmanJ. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of In Utopia, The Chess Artist, The Devil is a Gentleman, and A collection of short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.
Title(s): The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature
Matthea HarveyMatthea Harvey is the author of Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007),Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004), and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000). Modern Life was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the winner of the prestigious Kingsly Tufts Poetry Prize for 2009. Harvey has served as the poetry editor of American Letters & Commentary, as well as a contributing editor to jubilat and BOMB. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.
Title(s):The Little General and The Giant Snowflake
Michiel HeynsMichiel Heyns is the author of four novels: The Children’s Day, The Reluctant Passenger, The Typewriter’s Tale, and Bodies Politic. He has translated two works by Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat and Memorandum, and he has recently translated Equatoria by Tom Dreyer, (Aflame Books UK) 2008. He reviews regularly for the Sunday Independent. He was awarded the English Academy’s Pringle Prize for reviewing in 2006 and the Sunday Times Fiction prize in 2007for his translation of Agaat.
Title(s): The Children’s Day
Michael Helm was born in Saskatchewan. His most recent novel, Cities of Refuge, is a national bestseller in Canada and was a Rogers Writers’ Trust Ficiton Award finalist, a Giller Prize nominee, and a Globe and Mail and Now magazine Best Book of the Year. His earlier novels are The Projectionist, a finalist for the Giller Prize and the Trillium Award; and In the Place of Last Things, a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. His writings on fiction, poetry, and the visual arts have appeared in North American newspapers and magazines, including Brick, where he serves as an editor. He teaches at York University in Toronto. Title(s): Cities of Refuge
Elina HirvonenWhen I Forgot is Elina Hirvonen’s first novel. Hirvonen is a celebrity in Finland, where she has previously been a TV presenter and chat show host. She has just finished her first documentary, which focuses on African migration to Europe. She is a passionate traveler and has journeyed independently through thirty different countries.
Title(s): When I Forgot
Mikhail IosselMikhail Iossel was born in Leningrad, USSR, where he belonged to a circle of underground (“samizdat”) writers. He immigrated to the United States in 1986 and is currently the coordinator of the creative writing program of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. The author of Every Hunter Wants to Know (W.W. Norton), a collection of stories, and coeditor of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive). He has received fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Stanford University. In 1998 he founded Summer Literary Seminars, Inc.—one of the world’s largest international literary conferences: www.sumlitsem.org.
Title(s): Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia
Matt KishMatt Kish was born in 1969 and lives in the middle of Ohio. After stints as a cafeteria cook, a hospital registrar, a bookstore manager, and an English teacher, he ended up as a librarian. He draws as often as he can, often with whatever he can find. He has tried his hand at 35mm black-and-white photography (with real film and real chemicals), making comics and zines, a bit of collage, and lots of pen and ink. Moby-Dick is his favorite novel.
Title(s): Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page
Joshua Knelman Josh Knelman is an award-winning journalist and editor. He was a founding editorial member of The Walrus magazine, and his writing has appeared in Toronto Life, Saturday Night, the National Post, and The Globe and Mail. Also the coeditor of Four Letter Word: New Love Letters, he lives in Toronto.
Title(s): Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art
Jim KrusoeJim Krusoe is the author of the novels Girl Factory (Tin House Books) andIceland; two collections of stories, Blood Lake and Abductions; as well as five books of poetry. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund. He teaches at Santa Monica College and lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.
Title(s): Girl Factory, Erased, and Toward You.
Sarahlee LawrenceSarahlee Lawrence was born and raised on her family ranch in Terrebonne, Oregon. After a decade spent studying, traveling, river rafting, and earning an MS in Environmental Science and Writing from the University of Montana, she returned to the ranch, where she owns and operates an organic vegetable farm.
Title(s): River House
Alex LemonAlex Lemon is the author of Happy: A Memoir, the poetry collections Mosquito, Hallelujah Blackout , Fancy Beasts, and the chapbook At Last Unfolding Congo. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Best American Poetry 2008, AGNI, BOMB, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Open City, Pleiades, and Tin House, among others. He was awarded a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He co-edits LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation with Ray Gonzalez and frequently writes book reviews. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas and teaches at Texas Christian University.
Title(s): Mosquito
Michele MathesonMichele Matheson lives in Los Angeles.
Title(s): Saving Angelfish
Win McCormackWin McCormack is currently publisher and editor in chief of Tin House magazine. He has written on political issues for a variety of publications, including The Nation. From 1983 to 1986 he wrote a monthly column called Rajneesh Watch for Oregon Magazine, of which he was then editor in chief. The columns won the magazine a William Allen White Commendation for investigative reporting.
Title(s): The Rajneesh Chronicles: The True Story of the Cult that Unleashed the First Act of Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil
Keith Lee MorrisKeith Lee Morris is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Clemson University. His short stories have been published in Tin House, A Public Space, Southern Review, Ninth Letter, StoryQuarterly, New England Review, The Sun, and the Georgia Review, among other publications. The University of Nevada published his first two books, The Greyhound God(2003) and The Best Seats in the House (2004).
Title(s): The Dart League King, Call it What You Want
Lucia NevaiLucia Nevai is the author of Seriously, a novel, published by Little, Brown. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, Iowa Review, Zoetrope All-Story, the New Yorker, Glimmer Train, and other literary magazines. Her first collection, Star Game, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her second collection, Normal, was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. A native of Des Moines, Iowa, she lives in upstate New York.
Title(s) Salvation
Marlene Van NiekerkMarlene Van NiekerkMarlene van Niekerk is an award-winning poet, novelist, and short story writer. Her publications include the short story collection The Woman Who Forgot Her Spyglass, the novella Memorandum, and the novels Triomf and Agaat. Van Niekerk is currently an associate professor in Afrikaans and Dutch literature and creative writing at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa.
Title(s): Agaat
Véronique OlmiVéronique Olmi was born in 1962 in Nice and now lives in Paris. She is a highly acclaimed French dramatist and her twelve plays have won numerous awards. Bord de Mer, published in 2001 and translated into all major European languages, was her first novel.
Title(s): Beside the Sea
Mary OtisMary Otis’s work has been published in Best New American Voices, Tin House, the Los Angeles Times, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Berkeley Literary Journal, and Santa Monica Review. She was a runner-up in Zoetrope, Poets and Writers magazine, and Swink short story contests, and her short story “Pilgrim Girl” received a 2004 Pushcart Prize honorable mention. Originally from the Boston area, she lives in Los Angeles.
Title(s): Yes, Yes, Cherries
Jeff ParkerJeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman and the collection The Back of the Line and the coeditor of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States. He served as the program director of Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is currently the acting director of the Master’s Program in the Field of Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.
Title(s):Ovenman, Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia
Jules RenardJules Renard (1864-1910) was a French author and member of the Académie Goncourt, most famous for the works Poil de Carotte (Carrot hair) (1894) and Histoires naturelles (Natural Histories) (1896). Among his other works are Le Plaisir de rompre (The Pleasure of Breaking) (1898) and Huit jours à la campagne (Eight Days in the Countryside) (1906).
Title(s): The Journal of Jules Renard
Mike SacksMike Sacks has written for such publications as The Believer, Esquire, GQ, Maxim, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, Premiere, Radar, Salon, Time, Time Out New York, Vanity Fair, Vice, and Women’s Health. He has worked at The Washington Post, and is currently on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair. His first book, And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Humor Writers About Their Craft, was released July 2009 by Writer’s Digest Books. His second book, Sex: Our Bodies: Our Junk, co-written with Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Jason Roeder, and Ted Travelstead, was released by Random House in August 2010.
Title(s): Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason
Brenda ShaugnessyBrenda Shaughnessy is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy and the forthcoming Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). She is the recent recipient of the prestigious James Laughlin award. She teaches at Columbia University and at Eugene Lang College of the New School University. She is the poetry editor at Tin House magazine and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Title(s):Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House
Alexis SmithAlexis M. Smith grew up in Soldotna, Alaska, and Seattle, Washington. She received an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. She has written for Tarpaulin Sky and powells.com. She has a son and two cats, and they all live together in a little apartment in Portland, Oregon.
Title(s): Glaciers
Robert Paul SmithRobert Paul Smith is the author of the best-selling Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. and of the novelsSo It Doesn’t Whistle, The Journey, Because of My Love, andThe Time and the Place. Smith was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, and graduated from Columbia College in 1936. He worked as a writer with CBS Radio.
Title(s): How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself
Zak SmithZak Smith is an artist who first came to prominence with his mammoth work Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow. Smith’s paintings and drawings are held in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. We Did Porn— a book includng drawings and stories about his experiences working in the adult film industry— his third book and his first to include writing— was published by Tin House Books. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Title(s): Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow, We Did Porn
Scott SparlingScott Sparling grew up near railroad tracks in Michigan. He now lives outside Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son. Wire to Wire is his first novel.
Title(s): Wire to Wire
Rob SpillmanRob Spillman is editor of Tin House magazine and executive editor of Tin House Books. He was previously the monthly book columnist for Details magazine and is a contributor of book reviews and essays to Salon and Bookforum. He has written for the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Review, British GQ, Connoisseur, Details, Nerve, the New York Times Book Review, Premiere, Rolling Stone, Spin, Sports Illustrated, SPY, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Worth, among other magazines, newspapers, and online magazines. He has also worked for Random House, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker.
Title(s): Fantastic Women- Alberto Barrera TyszkaAlberto Barrera Tyszka, poet and novelist, is well known in Venezuela for his Sunday column in the newspaper El Nacional. He cowrote the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed Hugo Chávez (2007), the first biography of the Venezuelan president. The Sickness won the prestigious Premio Herralde—an honor previously bestowed on Roberto Bolaño and Javier Marias, among others—and was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2011,
Title(s): The Sickness
Jan Elizabeth WatsonJan Elizabeth Watson was born in Washington, D.C. and spent nearly a decade in New York City, where she received her MFA from Columbia University. She has worked extensively as an editor, copywriter, and adjunct professor of creative writing. She lives in Maine and has one child, a daughter. This is her first novel.
Title(s)Asta in the Wings
Michelle WildgenMichelle Wildgen is senior editor at Tin House magazine. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, Best New American Voices 2004, Best Food Writing 2004, TriQuarterly, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence. She is the author of a novel, You’re Not You, and editor of Food & Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast.
Title(s):Food & Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast
Leni ZumasLeni Zumas’s story collection, Farewell Navigator, was published by Open City in 2008. Her fiction has appeared in numerous journals, including Quarterly West, Open City, Salt Hill, New Orleans Review, Keyhole, and New York Tyrant.
Title(s) The Listeners
