Junk .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Who Is Vera Kelly?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Seas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Tin House Magazine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Contact.and.Distribution.Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Contents

summer 2018 catalog

2

TOMMY “TEEBS” PICO

is the author of Nature Poem, IRL (Birds LLC, 2016), and the zine series Hey, Teebs. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inau-gural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry,

and his poems have appeared in BOMB, Guernica, Tin House, and the Offing. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn and co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker.

Building.on.IRL.and.Nature Poem,.Tommy.Pico’s.Junk.is.a.book-length.

break-up.poem.that.explores.the.experience.of.loss.and.erasure,.both.

personal.and.cultural..

The third book in Tommy Pico’s Teebs trilogy, Junk is a breakup poem in couplets:

ice floe and hot lava, a tribute to Janet Jackson and nacho cheese. In the static that follows the loss of a job or an apartment or a boyfriend, what can you grab on to for orientation? The narrator wonders what happens to the sense of self when the illusion of security has been stripped away. And for an indigenous person, how do these lost markers of identity echo larger cultural losses and erasures in a changing political landscape? In part taking its cue from A.R. Ammons’s Garbage, Teebs names this liminal space “Junk,” in the sense that a junk shop is full of old things waiting for their next use; different items that collectively become indistinct. But can there be a comfort outside the anxiety of utility? An appreciation of “being” for the sake of being? And will there be Chili Cheese Fritos?

MAY$15.95.·.Trade.Paper.·.6”.x.9”

ISBN:.978-1-941040-97-3 ·.eBook:.978-1-941040-98-0

Rights:.World

PROMOTION & PUBLICIT Y

•. National.interview.campaign

•. Extensive.ARC.distribution.to.chains.and.indies

•. Giveaways.on.author’s.popular.social.media.pages

•. Advertising.in.Tin House.Magazine.and.other.literary.journals

•. High-profile.NY.launch.and.select.author.appearances.nationwide

POETRY

Junkpoems by TOMMY PICO

3

“A thrilling punk rock epic that is a tour of all we know and can’t admit to. Pico is a poet of canny instincts, his lyric is somehow so casual and so so serious at the same time. He is determined to blow your mind apart, and . . . you should let him.”

—ALEXANDER CHEE

“Mix of hey that’s poetry (uncanny resistance) with hey that’s a text and smashing goals & fulfilling them along the way & saying my parents fulfilled them. Do-ing it differently being alive & an artist. I love this work. Unpredictable & sweet & strong to continue.”

—EILEEN MYLES

“The self-conscious labor of these poems explores a culture of asides, stutters, stammers, and media glitches. It’s no wonder Tommy Pico manages to name and claim identity while also reminding us of his (and our!) limitlessness. Nature Poem is a book about our true nature.”

—JERICHO BROWN

“A poet who will not hesitate calling out winter as a death threat from nature, Tommy Pico hears the wild frequencies in the mountains and rivers of cit-ies. The marriage of extraordinary sharp writing with the most astute commentary on almost every possible thing a human will feel, think, do, dance like, or smell like.Then, suddenly, he asks, “What if I re-ally do feel connected to the land?” I read this book in one sitting. Then I read it in one sitting again the next day. The staying power of this poem I will bla-tantly say is without doubt!”

—CACONRAD

“[Nature Poem] finds Pico incorporating or indirectly referencing his surroundings in freewheeling, inti-mate verse, while turning a humorous lens on life as a queer man.”

—OUT MAGAZINE

“Pico centers his second book-length poem on the trap of conforming to identity stereotypes as he ponders his reluctance to write about nature as a Native American . . . In making the subliminal overt, Pico reclaims power by calling out microaggres-sions and drawing attention to himself in the face of oppression.”

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred Review

“Humor lays the groundwork for a hard truth and, for poet Tommy Pico, that hard truth is about living as an indigenous person in occupied America. . . . Pi-co’s poetry builds a contemporary Native American persona, one that occupies multiple spaces simulta-neously: New York City, the internet, pop music, and Grindr. It’s an identity that’s determined to be heard by the culture at large.”

—THE ORGANIST/KCRW

“Instead of following the conventions of the pastoral tradition, in which nature is revered, Pico adopts a tragicomic view. On the one hand, the land of his native people can be described with great rever-ence, desert nights that ‘chill and sparkle and swoon with metal/ lighting up the dark universe.’ On the other, that same landscape carries and extends lega-cies of racism and genocide that Pico is determined not to forget.”

—THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“Pico has pulled me out of a poetry slump. His po-ems make me want to live with more poetry, to read, write and revel in poetry as a form that does not have to be a container.”

—BROOKLYN MAGAZINE

“Few people capture New York, queerness, and the artful use of hashtags in a poem quite like Tommy Pico.”

—NYLON

PRAISE FOR NATURE POEM

“Who Is Vera Kelly? is the twisty, literary, woman-driven spy novel you’ve always wanted to read. Vera Kelly hopscotches from Brooklyn to Buenos Aires, fueled by gin and cigarettes,

on the run from her past and equipped with a case of listening devices. But this is no ordinary adventure novel: Rosalie Knecht is a sensitive and gifted writer with a lyrical voice

that imbues this dazzling novel with unexpected emotional depth.”

—AMY STEWART , New York Times bestselling author of Girl Waits With Gun

Dear Bookseller,

This book came out of a family story. My maternal grandfather, Charles Jennings, worked for the CIA after WWII, analyzing Soviet radio broadcasts. He was fired during the McCarthy era because of connections to leftists that he may or may not have had in his youth. In 1961, he fell from the roof of the family home in Chevy Chase, Maryland while cleaning the gutters. He died a few days later.

If there’s anything more mysterious than a grandparent who never reached old age, it’s one who was in the CIA and had a disputed political history. My mother barely remembers him. He was from Montana; he liked to take my grandmother to the theater; he may have had a drinking problem. My grandmother lived into her 90s and loved to talk, but never said much about him.

This novel came from my grandfather’s exile from the CIA and his eventual accidental death, but they’re not in it. If you read this book, and I hope you do, you’ll find that nobody’s father works for the CIA and nobody falls off a roof (well, some inmates of a juvenile detention facility jump from a roof, but they all survive). That often happens to me, that I start writing from an image or event that I eventually hide, efface, or remove. Maybe fiction is all the things we say to keep from repeating the same old true story, which is a little too sad, even though it happened a long time ago.

Vera is a young woman who grew up in the wake of a loss, and who is adept at running, evading, and hiding. She’s also a CIA spy. I hope you enjoy her story.

XO

5

F ICTION

ROSALIE KNECHT is a social worker in New York City and was born and raised in Pennsylvania. She is the translator of Cesar Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind and has been a Center

for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow and a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Argentina. Her debut novel, Relief Map, was published by Tin House Books in 2016.

New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into

the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She’s working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.

Next thing she knows she’s in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she’s forced to take extreme measures to save herself.

Who Is Vera Kelly?

a novel by ROSALIE KNECHT

JU NE$15.95.·.Trade.Paper.·.5 1/2”.x.8 1/2”

ISBN:.978-1-947793-01-9 ·.eBook:.978-1-947793-02-6

Rights:.North.American

PROMOTION & PUBLICIT Y

•. Deluxe.ARC.packages.for.booksellers

•. Featured.author.at.Winter.Institute

•. In-person.meetings.with.New.York.media

•. Book.club.marketing.campaign

•. Extensive.galley.giveaways.via.Goodreads.and.Tin.House.Galley.Club

An.exhilarating.page.turner.and.perceptive.coming-of-age.story,.Who Is Vera Kelly?.introduces.an.original,.

wry,.and.whip-smart.female.spy.for.the.twenty-first.century.

6

SAMANTHA HUNT’s

debut novel, The Seas, won a National Book Foundation award for writers under thirty-five. She is also the author of Mr. Splitfoot, Dark, Dark: Stories, and The

Invention of Everything Else. Hunt’s writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, A Public Space, Tin House, Cabinet, among others.

MAGGIE NELSON is a poet, critic, and nonfiction author of books such as The Argonauts, Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Bluets, and Jane: A Murder. She teaches in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts and lives in Los Angeles, California.

“An.aqueous.affair,.flooded.with..water.themes.......Hunt’s.writing.is..

free.of.affectation.and.carries.surprising.conviction.”.

—TH E N EW YO RKE R

Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south,

the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She’s often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.

True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior. The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend.

With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.

JULY$19.95.·.Trade.Cloth.·.5".x.7 3/4".

ISBN:.978-1-941040-9-59 ·.eBook:.978-1-941040-9-66

Rights:.North.American

PROMOTION & PUBLICIT Y

•. Extensive.online.ad.campaign

•. Print.ads.in Tin House.Magazine.and.other.literary.journals

•. Massive.Goodreads.giveaway

•. High-profile.author.interviews.and.off-the-book.essays

F ICTION

The Seasa novel by SAMANTHA HU NT

introduction by MAGGIE NELSON

7

pra i se f or The Sea s“One of the most distinctive and unforgettable voices I have read in years. This book will linger . . . in your head for a good long time.”

—Dave E gge rs

“Hunt’s spare narrative is as mysterious and lyrical as a mermaid’s song. The strands of her story are touched with magic, strange in the best possible way and very pleasurable to read.”

—Andrea Ba r re t t

“The Seas is creepy and poetic, subversive and strangely funny, [and] a phenomenal piece of literature.”

—M ichelle Tea

f rom the in t rod uc ti on by M aggie Nelson

I read The Seas when it first came out and was scalded by its beauty. It took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you’re newly falling in love with literature, newly shocked by its capacity to cast a spell—you know the feeling, when you turn the last page of a novel that you’ve burrowed into and has burrowed into you, and suddenly find that the book has become more than a book, it’s become a talisman, something precious. A little scary, a little holy.

The Seas felt like that to me. Radiant with magic, some of it dangerous. Some of it hurt. Probably I feared it a bit—not only how perfect it was, as a piece of writing, but also how much it made me feel. About the gigantic, all-consuming blue wave that begins and ends and haunts The Seas, our 19-year old narrator writes: “It is truly a gorgeous color. This blue is chaotic and changing. I recognize it immediately.” I recognized, recognize, it too. It’s the wave that holds the narrator’s grief for her lost father, her wobbly faith in language and etymology, her enthrallment with the oceanic, her fixation on the color blue, her complex relationship to her mother, her bobbing amidst a sea of alcoholics, her own fierce sexual desire, her loneliness, her conviction of her mermaid nature, her love for a mortal in deep pain whose suffering mirrors, alleviates, and exacerbates her own. It’s the wave that reveals the painful, exhilarating scope of her small and swelling life. O that wave.

And so I put The Seas up on a high shelf, not because I didn’t love it, but because its power felt so acute I needed to dim it a little, save it for another day.

Its re-release thankfully provided that occasion.And so I took it down, read it again in one sitting, then read it again the next day, and

then one more the next, each time finding it as mesmerizing, moving, and crystalline as I did years ago.

21 Locus Awards · 6 Nebula Awards · 6 Hugo Awards · 3 Jupiter Awards · 3 James Tiptree Jr. Awards · 2 World Fantasy Awards · 2 Asimov Readers Awards · 2 Endeavor Awards · The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award · The Newbery Honor · The Lewis Carrol Shelf Award · The Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize · The Pushcart Prize · The National Book Award · A Pulitzer Prize Nomination · The Library of Congress “Living Legend” · Award for significant contributions to America’s cultural heritage · The PEN/Malamud Award for “excellence in a body of short fiction” · The Margaret Edwards Award for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature · The Association for Library Service to Children’s May Hill Arbuthnot Honorary Lectureship · The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Emperor Has No Clothes Award · the North American Society for Utopian Studies’s Lyman Tower Sargent Distinguished Scholar Award · The Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF and Fantasy Scholarship · The World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement · The World Science Fiction Society’s Gandalf Grand Master Award · The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Grand Master Award · The National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

Among other honors, Ursula K. Le Guin is the recipient of . . .

9

NON F ICTION

URSULA K. LE GUIN Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-one novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry, and

four of translation. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

DAVID NAIMON‘s work appears or is forthcoming in Tin House, Fourth Genre, Story Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Fiction International, and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he hosts the literary radio program and podcast Between The Covers on KBOO 90.7FM.

When the New York Times called Ursula K. Le Guin, “America’s greatest living

science fiction writer,” they just might have undersold her legacy. It’s hard to look at her vast body of work—novels and stories across multiple genres, poems, translations, essays, speeches, and criticism—and see anything but one of our greatest writers, period.

In a series of interviews with David Naimon (Between the Covers), Le Guin discusses craft, aesthetics, and philosophy in her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction respectively. The discussions provide ample advice and guidance for writers of every level, but also give Le Guin a chance to to sound off on some of her favorite subjects: the genre wars, the patriarchy, the natural world, and what, in her opinion, makes for great writing. With excerpts from her own work and those books that she’s looked to for inspiration and guidance, this volume will be a treat for Le Guin’s longtime readers and a perfect introduction for those first approaching her writing.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing

by URSUL A K. LE GUI N &

DAVID NAIMON

JULY$14.95 ·.Trade.Cloth.·.51/4”.x.7”.

ISBN:.978-1-941040-99-7 ·.eBook:.978-1-947793-00-2

Rights:.North.American

PROMOTION & PUBLICIT Y

•. National.print.and.broadcast.interviews

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Le.Guin.discusses.her.fiction,.nonfiction,.and.poetry—both.her.process.and.

her.philosophy—with.all.the.wisdom,.profundity,.and.rigor.we.expect.from.one.

of.our.great.American.writers..

∏ınHouseAn.award-winning.quarterly,.Tin House.started.in.1999,.

the.singular.love.child.of.an.eclectic.literary.journal.and.a.beautiful.glossy.magazine.

. M A G A Z I N E

COMI NG SOON

PoisonFALL 2018

An issue devoted to poison pens, people, and places, with poems, stories, essays, and interviews about toxic relationships,

foods, drugs, cities, and the banes of our existences.

$12.95 ·.Ships.August.2018ISBN:.978-1-942855-21-7.·.eBook:.978-1-942855-22-4

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