FICTION

Stuart Dybek THE START OF SOMETHING
Perhaps the deceased had willed only debts, for the heirs, haughty with grief, were selling off the furnishings.

Tara Ison LIST ITEM #10: THE MOTEL ROOM
They were in the motel room, actually, when they’d had that conversation, spreading the drop cloth over the bed as if the quilted nylon spread, already a patchwork of stains, needed protection from them.

Etgar Keret HEALTHY START
At the café they always gave him a table set for two, and sat him across from an empty chair. Always. Even when the waiter specifically asked him whether he was alone.

Anthony Swofford An excerpt from the novel EXIT A
She put the wig and pistol in her purse and went downstairs to tell her father she was hanging out with friends in Shinjuku after attending the 8:00 p.m. movie at the base theater.

Stephanie Soileau SO THIS IS PERMANENCE
And Sarah did not know herself well enough to be certain where she actually meant to go when she snatched her mother’s keys off the kitchen counter and announced that she was taking the baby for a ride to see if maybe, by the grace of God, that would shut him up.

Jim Shepard EROS 7
By 12:30 p.m. Moscow Time I will have put on my orange space suit and climbed into my own spacecraft, the Vostok 6, to rendezvous with a fellow cosmonaut, Senior Lieutenant Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky, 150 miles above the earth.

Per Petterson An excerpt from the novel OUT STEALING HORSES
Jon came often to our door, at all hours, wanting me to go out with him . . . It was risky, but I never said no and never said anything to my father about what we were up to.

Ron Carlson TUMBLED OAKS
We had already noted that another effect the dead had on the living was to give some of them work cleaning up the cemeteries.

NEW VOICE—FICTION

Justin Torres IN THE KITCHEN
We wanted to feel the pop and smack of tomato guts exploding; we wanted the guts to drip down the walls and land on our cheeks and foreheads and congeal in our hair.

POETRY

Peter Gizzi
BOLSHEVESCENT
DEAD AIR
AUBADE AND BEYOND

Jillian Weise
POUND, DRUNK ON A FORTY, GOES OFF

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
FOUR PLANES OF EXPERIENCE

Charlie Smith
LEAVES IN THE SUBWAY
ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO FAMILIAR AMERICAN TREES

James Galvin
THE SWAMP
TWO SKETCHES OF HORSES

NEW VOICE—POETRY

Christopher Schmidt
TENEMENT
ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES

Julie King
LOVE LETTER TO MY FATHER’S HEART
MOTHER’S PANTOUM

INTERVIEWS

RICK BASS
Rick Bass’s life’s work—all three of them. Tin House assistant editor Ben George met with Bass to discuss fiction, family, and the writer’s longtime environmental activism.

ALAN SILLITOE
British novelist Alan Sillitoe speaks in clear English with poet and Tin House contributor Montana Wojczuk about working-class roots, vernacular style, and the end of a sequence.

FEATURES & ESSAYS

Milan Kundera GETTING INTO THE SOUL OF THINGS
The novel has its own muse. From Anna Karenina to Emma Bovary and beyond, the acclaimed author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality considers the novel its own distinct art form.

Steve Almond CONDIFREAKS SPEAK: A HATE MAIL COLLOQUY
The author publicly resigned from Boston College when Condoleezza Rice was invited to speak at commencement. He received just a little hate mail in response. Here, a thoughtful reply.

Anthony Doerr WE ARE MAPMAKERS
Time and space are no obstacle: around the earth with the stories of Alice Munro.

Stephen Elliott WHERE I SLEPT
From October 1985 to August 1986: a teenage homeless year.

LOST & FOUND

Paul Collins AROUND THE WORLD IN 100 YEARS

Michael Rosenwald On ALVA JOHNSTON

Aaron Hamburger On SHOLEM ASCH’s Three Cities

Tommy Wallach On ZELDA FITZGERALD’s Save Me the Waltz

READABLE FEAST

Carol Paik DUMPLINGS
Sometimes seeking your culinary roots is just a bad idea.

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