Tin: Bold approach belies drab lit image
Words in a Tin House
A Northwest Thurman Street landmark becomes the home of a literary magazine with a national reach
The 1993 book “Blue Moon Over Thurman Street” contains three photographs by Roger Donald of corrugated zinc siding being added to the house at 2601 N.W. Thurman St. The accompanying poem by Ursula K. Le Guin reads:
“…. A house sheds
its skin
sheds its inhabitants
eats children
spit out adults
till what the same house is
is a good question”
It’s still a good question. The tall Victorian that was once a neighborhood market is now a local landmark known as Tin House, both for its shiny, distinctive siding and for the literary magazine that’s produced inside. The house – extensively expensively remodeled into editorial offices and apartments for staff and visiting writers – and the magazine are works in progress best summed up by a piece of art over the door that shows a man pulling the house by chain. The artist is Goger Williams, and the art is called “The Burden of Our Ambitions.”
Tin House, the house, sits on the northwest comer of a busy intersection. Friendly House, a community center, is a block away, and a popular entrance to Forest Park is situated on Northwest Thurman to the west.
Tin House, the magazine, is also a crossroads, too. Founded in 1999, it gained immediate attention for its bold, colorful design, intelligent editorial approach and willingness to pay for fiction, poetry and essays. Those qualities, mostly absent in the drab academic world of literary quarterlies, attracted some of the finest writers in the country. It also led to a publishing deal that has produced two books and a writers workshop that begins Saturday at Reed College and includes filmmaker Todd Haynes and writers Dorothy Allison, Denis Johnson, Rick Moody and Lorrie Moore.
The house, the books, the workshop and the latest edition of the magazine (an eye-catching theme issue devoted to sex) have brought Tin House more recognition than ever. After15 issues, it is generally considered one of the best literary quarterlies in the country. It is sold nationally in Barn & Noble stores and has been praised as "both heavyweight and gorgeous" by Vogue and "the future of literary magazines" by The Village Voice.
Now it wants to raise its profile in Portland, discover some brilliant new writers and maybe, just maybe, make some money.
Inside the Tin House, air conditioning holds the summer heat at bay. Senior editor Lee Montgomery and one of the magazine's many manuscript readers work on the bright, open first floor. Tin House receives about l00 unsolicited submissions every week and reads them all. The fact that it pays at least $50 for a poem and $200 to $800 for a short story means the "slush pile" of submissions grows everyday. Those rates might not sound like much, but in the world of literary quarterlies, where publication means everything and payment often is two free copies of the magazine, they are a powerful attraction.
On the back stairs, a huge sculpture called "The Judge" by J.D. Perkin watches over the proceedings. Upstairs, a furnished apartment has baby toys left over from a visit by managing editor Holly MacArthur and some of her family, and another empty apartment awaits a visiting writer, perhaps someone in town for the writers workshop, which runs through July 19.
Below "The Judge" sits Wim McCormack, the publisher of Tin House and the man responsible for the beautifully remodeled house, the beautifully designed magazine and the literary dreams that seep out of the beautifully polished woodwork.
McCormack, 58, has a long history with magazines and as a supporter of liberal causes. He was an early financial backer of Mother Jones magazine, is one of the “Group of 100" who give money to The Nation, and was the publisher
of Oregon Magazinefrom 1976 to1988. He is one of three stockholders in MEDIAmerica, a company that publishes Oregon Business and Oregon Home magazines. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1984 and 2000 and is a regular donor to Democratic politicians.
McCormack comes from a wealthy family and grew up in Greenwich, Conn., but that doesn't mean he is running Tin House as a hobby. Over lunch at Jo Bar & Rotisserie in Northwest Portland, he was blunt about one of the reasons for the writers workshop.
Creating brand identification and promoting the magazine are not familiar concepts among literary quarterlies. Most are affiliated with a college or university and "look and feel like castor oil," said Tin House's editor Rob Spillman.
Castor oil wasn't what McCormack wanted. Starting a literary magazine "was something I had fantasized about doing since the early 1980s," said McCormack, who graduated from Harvard and came west in 1970 to get a degree in creative writing from the University of Oregon. “It didn't seem very practical then, but I'm at the point in my life now where I thought if I was going to do it, I should do it."
McCormack had the magazine in mind when he bought the Tin House in 1996. He said the magazine's name presented itself first as a nickname, then a more serious option when "any other logical name sounded abstract or pretentious."
When it was time to hire an editor, McCormack went to New York, where he lived for much of the 1980s and early '90s, and asked friends in publishing for recommendations. Spillman, the book columnist at Details magazine and
a regular reviewer at other publications, and his wife, Elissa Schappell, who writes the Hot Type column for Vanity Fair, were interested.
"Win was sort of sniffing around, looking for an editor, and we pitched it to him as a bicoastal arrangement, where we would live in New York and be co-editors," Spillman said. "A two-for-one deal."
McCormack thought dividing the magazine between Portland and New York "sort of reflected my own split,” and the deal was made.
Spillman and Schappell had good connections among New York writers and were open to McCormack's ideas, which included colorful design, regular features, a table of contents and occasional theme issues.
"We don't want to be Granta and run themes into the ground, but it's a fact that in terms of marketing, themes work," he said. "It's easier to design the cover, too."
Regular features in Tin House include Lost and Found (writers discuss long-forgotten books), Blithe Spirits (drink recipes, including the Tin House martini) and Readable Feast (food writing and recipes). Theme issues so far: Hollywood, music and sex. Of the last, Montgomery said, "I've never seen the publisher so happy."
"From the time I started Tin House I was looking for things that could generate income to offset the costs of the magazine," McCormack said. “It helps to create a brand ID and helps to promote the magazine.”
Spillman said working 3,000 miles from the Tin House hasn't been a problem and that he once closed an issue from St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was attending a literary conference. He comes to Portland four times a year and has taken over as editor while Schappell went to editor-at-large status to work on her second book. He said McCormack "has the final word on absolutely everything. He reads absolutely everything and usually defers to us on stories, but he has the final say."
It was McCormack who made the deal to get Tin House into Barnes & Noble. Tin House also has published two books with Bloomsbury: "Bestial Noise: The Tin House Fiction Reader" (Bloomsbury, $16.95 paperback, 382 pages) and A.J. Albany's "Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood" (Bloomsbury, $23.95, 163 pages), which grew out of a Tin House essay. McCormack said that while Tin House sold well at Powell's, he hoped the writers workshop would raise its profile in town.
"Is Tin House a Portland magazine?" he said. "I don't know."
Spillman said Tin House's circulation is about 10,000 and the magazine is not yet breaking even. He said relying on one publisher is better than most literary magazines that have to chase grant money or depend on academic affiliations, but he joked that if McCormack "decided to buy a hockey team tomorrow and walk away," the magazine would be on thin ice.
McCormack is not interested in hockey, though.
"His idea was for a readable literary magazine that had broader appeal than an academic journal, that people could pick up and enjoy," Spillman said. "That's what we're trying to do."
Many of the seminars, panel discussions and readings at the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop are open to the public. Admission varies; for details, call
503-274-4393 or go to www.tinhouse.com
By JEFF BAKER
THE OREGONIAN
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