Tin House

About Tin House

Tin House was a literary quarterly published in Portland, Oregon, from 1999 to 2019. Published by McCormack Communications and edited by Rob Spillman and Elissa Schappell, the high-end print magazine became widely recognized for championing new and emerging fiction writers and poets, while also publishing some of the most established names in American letters. Though the print magazine closed with its twentieth-anniversary issue, the Tin House name continues through Tin House Books, the Tin House Workshop, and online publishing at tinhouse.com.

Founding

The first issue of Tin House was published in the spring of 1999, under the imprint of McCormack Publications of Portland, Oregon. The magazine was the creation of publisher Win McCormack and editor Rob Spillman, who set out to build a literary magazine with the production values of a glossy consumer title and the editorial ambition of the best literary quarterlies. From the beginning it was a bi-coastal enterprise, publishing out of both Portland, Oregon, and Brooklyn, New York, and drawing its strength and inspiration from those two vibrant cultural centers.

The premiere issue announced the magazine's editorial range immediately: it included an original short story by David Foster Wallace, "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, The Acclaimed New Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon," alongside three stories by Ron Carlson, Stuart Dybek, and James Kelman; poetry by Charles Simic, C. K. Williams, Agha Shahid Ali, Philip Fried, Ales Debeljak, and Anne-Marie Levine; and profiles of Peter Matthiessen and Ariel Dorfman. That first number established the template the magazine would follow for twenty years: major established talents alongside new and emerging voices, fiction and poetry alongside profiles, essays, and criticism, all presented in a crisp and entertaining visual format.

Editorial Identity

Tin House ran regular themed issues — past themes included Sex and Candy — while its summer and winter issues were typically open and non-themed. The editors sought "any and every angle" on their themes and described themselves as looking for work that was "new and fresh, unlike what they've read and published before." Submissions were welcomed from emerging writers as well as more established ones, with a 10,000-word limit on stories and essays and up to five poems at a time. The magazine used Submittable to manage submissions and accepted simultaneous submissions.

Stephen King once described the magazine as "an invaluable repository of fine American writing and American fiction, presented in a crisp and entertaining visual format." The glossy, well-designed quarterly looked like no other literary magazine on the rack, and its distinctive design was part of its appeal: it treated literary writing as something to be celebrated rather than merely preserved.

Championing New and Emerging Writers

Tin House became widely recognized for championing emerging fiction writers and poets, a cause the magazine made central to its identity throughout its twenty-year history. Its pages included well-established talents such as Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson, Miranda July, Tommy Pico, and Fatimah Asghar, but its reputation rested equally on its commitment to writers who had not yet found a national audience. The magazine's contributors were frequently recognized by major American literary awards and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Editor Rob Spillman received the 2015 PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing and the 2015 VIDA Award for his work on the magazine, and Tin House itself received the 2015 Firecracker Award for General Excellence. These honors reflected the industry's recognition of the magazine's editorial quality and its role in shaping contemporary American writing.

Signature Features

Each issue of Tin House carried "Lost and Found," a feature on neglected books in which writers discussed lesser-known books and authors, with three to five pieces in each installment. The books covered usually related in some way to the issue's theme; in the "Sex" issue, for example, the feature included pieces on Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge and Florence Aadland's Big Love. The debut issue carried a "Lost and Found" review by Francine Prose, and Helen Schulman contributed a piece on "The Final Opus of Leon Solomon." The feature became one of the magazine's beloved institutions, reviving interest in forgotten titles across its twenty-year run.

The magazine also became known for its adventurous special issues, such as the Fall 2012 issue dedicated entirely to Portland and Brooklyn writers, artists, and musicians, which paired Ursula K. Le Guin's fiction with pieces about the cultural life of both cities and even included a download code for sixteen tracks from Portland and Brooklyn musicians.

Win McCormack and the Tin House Company

Publisher Win McCormack built Tin House into a multi-division publishing company. In 2016 he purchased The New Republic from Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, broadening his publishing footprint beyond the literary world. The company comprised three divisions: the magazine, Tin House Books, and the Tin House Summer Workshop, the annual writers' gathering in Portland that Spillman co-founded. The magazine's costs, however, proved difficult to sustain: paper costs were rising across the United States, the company had been increasing salaries to retain staff and had made the decision to pay its interns, and the New Republic acquisition was, in deputy editor Holly MacArthur's words, "costing money."

The End of the Print Magazine

In December 2018, Tin House Publishing announced that it would end the printed magazine the following year. The twentieth-anniversary issue, published in June 2019, was its last. Publisher Win McCormack said in a written statement: "Given the current costs of producing a literary magazine, I have decided to shift resources to Tin House's other two divisions: Tin House Books and the Tin House Workshop. ... We will continue to publish original fiction, nonfiction, and poetry online at tinhouse.com, with a focus on new voices, a cause the magazine championed throughout its 20 year history."

Editor Rob Spillman, based in New York, added: "Twenty years feels like the right time to be stepping away and moving on to new adventures. I look forward to focusing on other opportunities at the intersection of art and activism." Deputy editor Holly MacArthur said the decision was not made in a hurry: "We decided that a 20-year anniversary would be a good time to call it a day. We've had an amazing run."

The Name Lives On

Although the print magazine closed, the Tin House name endures. Tin House Books continues as an independent book publisher, the Tin House Workshop continues its annual summer gathering for writers, and original fiction, nonfiction, and poetry continue to be published online at tinhouse.com, with the focus on new voices that the magazine championed throughout its history. The company that began as a glossy literary quarterly in Portland in 1999 thus transformed into a broader literary institution.

Legacy

Tin House's twenty-year run left a mark on American literary publishing out of proportion to its modest scale. It demonstrated that a literary magazine could be both visually ambitious and editorially serious, that emerging writers deserved the same beautiful presentation as established ones, and that a regional publisher in Portland could shape the national conversation. Its roster of contributors — from David Foster Wallace's story in the premiere issue to the emerging writers it introduced across eighty issues — constitutes a significant archive of turn-of-the-century American writing. As deputy editor Holly MacArthur put it at the end: an amazing run, called a day at the right time, on the magazine's own terms.