Granta & Tin House Receive Recognition for Their Fantastic Short Stories

 

Another literary win is in the bag for Benay clients, Tin House and Granta. The O. Henry Prize recognizes great pieces of short fiction and is “intended to ‘strengthen the art of the short story and to stimulate younger authors.’” Tin House has two winners with Kristen Iskandrian’s “The Inheritors” and Dylan Landis’ “Trust.” Granta has one winner with Mark Haddon’s “The Gun.” 

You can read “The Inheritors” in Tin House’s summer 2012 “Summer Reading” Journal Issue 52.

You can read “Trust” in Tin House’s summer 2013 “Summer Reading” Journal Issue 56.

You can read “The Gun” here (but you must be a subscriber to Granta Magazine).

Benay is always excited and happy to see our clients get well-deserved recognition. We wish Tin House and Granta the best.

Akashic Books and Tin House Make Flavorwire's "25 Independent Presses That Prove This Is the Golden Age of Indie Publishing"

We just wanted to give a big congratulations to Benay clients, Akashic Books and Tin House for their feature in Flavorwire’s 25 Independent Presses That Prove This Is the Golden Age of Indie Publishing. With all of the publishing doomsayers, it’s nice to see the little engines-that-could pulling strong.

Independent publishing — that is, publishing whatever an individual or small group think is worthy of dumping their time and money into — is nothing new. From Virginia and Leonard Woolf starting up Hogarth Press to the early days of Farrar, Straus and Giroux championing now-iconic authors that other publishers wouldn’t touch, DIY publishing has long been responsible for some of our best literature.

 Here’s what Jason Diamond from Flavorwire had to say about Akashic:

Literature lovers smiled when Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep became a massive bestseller — not just because of the clever title, but because it was awesome to see this fearless publisher get the mainstream recognition it deserves. And with a mission statement that emphasizes its intention of forever remaining a “independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers,” Akashic is pretty much the ultimate indie. From its acclaimed Noir series to books on punk-rock history to publishing Melvin Van Peebles, Akashic is doing it on its own terms.

And here’s what he had to say about Tin House:

Going strong as a literary magazine since 1999, this operation based in both Portland, Oregon and Brooklyn has seen its book-publishing wing getting bigger and better with every new book, including titles by Christopher Beha, Lucy Corin, and Matthew Specktor, as well as Zak Smith’s We Did Porn. 

Congratulations to them both! We love to see our clients get the recognition we know they deserve. Here’s to many more years of continued success!

Lee Montgomery's Fall Master Writer's Workshop

Former Tin House editor, Lee Montgomery is teaching an intermediate advanced “master” writer’s workshop in Portland, OR: The Fall Master Writer’s Workshop. The class begins on October 8th and will be held Tuesdays 6-8pm. Tuition is $600 and enrollment is limited to ten people.

“Designed to combine seminar and workshop methodologies, Montgomery employs in-class exercises, outside reading, as well as the classic workshop format. Students can expect to present new work at least twice during the session in addition to a private consultation with Lee during the final weeks of class. For those students who are interested in presenting their work to a broader audience, the class will culminate with a public reading.”

Montgomery has extensive experience as an editor and author. She is the author of The Things Between Us, A Memoir (Free Press, August 2006), Whose World Is This? Stories (University of Iowa Press, September 2007), and Searching for Emily: Illustrated (Nothing Moments Press, October 2007). The Things Between Us received the 2007 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction and Whose World Is This? received the 2007 John Simmons Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Ken Kesey Award in Fiction in 2008.

Click here to download the flyer for further information on signing up. We’re sure that this will be a fun and exciting experience for the students (I’d consider signing up if I was in OR) and wish Lee the best of luck in this and future endeavors.

Tin House Books Gains More Repute Through Favorable New York Times Review

by Colleen McClintock

Tin House Books' logo.

The Tin House Books title, The Celestials, was featured in a New York Times online review today*. The book, written by Karen Shepard, was released by Tin House just one month ago and has already amassed a fair amount of praise from some of Shepard’s more well-reputed peers, such as Darin Strauss and Julia Glass. The Times is likewise generous, calling the novel “richly detailed,” and claiming Shepard’s highly metaphorical style as more genuine and lifelike than anything else.

In The Celestials, Shepard weaves a tale of vivid fiction to life from a basis of stark fact. She takes the real, yet obscure history of Chinese migrant workers in the United States and shoves it into the spotlight, under the sympathetic context of an unhappy married couple. This couple is what drives the plot’s intensity, but the true, more refined quality of the book lies in the subtext; the historical accounts of the Chinese workers. Shepard hits on the historical points of their assimilation, starting with details as facetious as the immigrants’ obsession with photography, all the way to the serious, and tragic passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese immigration into the United States.

In addition to The Celestials, Tin House Books released a huge range of other books this season, not one bit less complex or gripping than Shepard’s. Since March they have released seven fiction titles alone, many of which have received much attention.

Horses of God – a book that has been pegged as the Moroccan equivalent of Paulo Lin’s City of God – won the English Pen Award, and the much talked-about American Dream Machine is in line to become the next Showtime Original Series (at the hands of Dexter, himself, no less).

Tin House plans to release six more titles before the year comes to an end, and if the past is any indication of the future, they will surely close it out with a bang.

If you’d like to learn more about Tin House Books has to offer, please visit their website by clicking here.

*The review will be published again in print in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.

Tin House Gains More Speed with N.Y. Times Rave Review of 'American Dream Machine'

by Colleen McClintock

Tin House Books saw yet another rave review of Matthew Specktor’s novel American Dream Machine appear in the print copy of the New York Times’ June 2nd Sunday Book Review. The same review was published early on the New York Times website, the previous Friday.

In laymen’s terms, the exposure that both Tin House and Specktor received within one single weekend was downright impressive. The review was featured on the eleventh page of the Book Review section, and took up the entire space of the page; a feat not easily achieved in the Times.  It was written by Christine Sneed, a well-established author, herself. It is perhaps because of this that Sneed was able to tap into the sentimentality of Specktor’s novel in her review, calling its dismal tone “elegaic” and deeming it as a “hip bildungsroman” narrated by the protagonist, Nate, in the fashion of a “fever dream.”

A photo of Matthew Specktor featured in the Times' review
of American Dream Machine, June 2.

This is arguably the biggest of praises that Tin House has seen this year via American Dream Machine, but it is definitely not the first, as the Times – and others – have featured smaller-scale reviews of the book since its April release.

But it is not just novels like American Dream Machine that give Tin House its chutzpah; titles are only part of it. There are factors like last year’s VIDA count that also come into play.

The VIDA count is an annual survey taken by the feminist literary group, VIDA, to see where the most gender equality lies in the world of publishing. In 2012 Tin House stood out among the lot as one of the most progressive in terms of gender balance, along with fellow Benay client, Granta Magazine.

Tin House also reinforces itself as a living, breathing institution through the yearly workshops they hold for up-and-coming writers. They are residential programs run by the very same editors of Tin House Books and of their sister lit mag, Tin House Magazine. The workshops are entered strictly through application and acceptance, but hold little pretense elsewhere and promise much growth for those who enroll. It is Tin House’s way of aiding new writers in reaching the successes that authors like Specktor have reached. In this, they ensure the survival and perseverance of a literary tradition based on craft, style, and most importantly, passion.

If you’d like to learn more about Tin House Books, please feel free to visit their website by clicking here. To see excerpts from American Dream Machine, please visit the book's page on the Tin House website. 

Tin House Author Approached by Dexter's Matthew C. Hall with Plans for Showtime Script

Of course we at Benay know all too well the breadth of talent our clients publish, but the verity of this realization came to fruition when Benay client Tin House Book's author, Matthew Specktor, was approach by none other than Michael C. Hall, who had a very particular proposal for him. Hall, who many of you may know better as the murderous television vigilante, Dexter, had read Specktor’s most recent novel, American Dream Machine, released from Tin House Books in April, and seen huge cinematic potential. He wanted the story to come to life on screen as a new Showtime television series, and he wanted Specktor to be the one to write it to life. Specktor agreed to the project; a decision that he would have had trouble making years ago.



Tin House author, Matthew Specktor

“I didn’t know very many happy screenwriters,” he writes in a recent column for Salon Media Group. “I didn’t know any, in fact: even the most successful among them… were miserable, touched with a kind of self-loathing unique to the breed.”

And yet Specktor is still giving it a go. The American Dream Machine project is still in its infancy at the Showtime studios, according to The Hollywood Reporter, but the prospects do seem hopeful. With the Dexter saga at a close, Hall is ramped up for a fresh new project, and Specktor seems to be in a rather healthy place these days in his relationship with screenwriting.

Tin House Books joked about the news on their Facebook page, last Monday, asking their followers who they think should play Beau, the father of the novel’s main character who rises out of nothingness to become one of Hollywood’s top agents. Answers proved cheeky, ranging from Patton Oswalt to Fred Melamed.



Screenshot of Michael C. Hall from an
episode of the Showtime series, Dexter.

On a more serious note, it does seem only fitting that an actor like Hall would pick up a book like American Dream Machine and bring it to Showtime. After all, their fast-paced racy series like Dexter, Weeds, and Californication, mirror the tone found in a large amount of Tin House’s titles. Alongside American Dream Machine’s gritty reality sits novels like Me and Mr. Booker, a tale of a small town sixteen-year-old who finds salvation from boredom in a charming Brit who shows her the ways of the world through style, adventure, whiskey, cigarettes and sex, and Misfit, a novel that outlines the last week of Marilyn Monroe’s life, and her long hard fall from the top of stardom.

Tin House’s books having a modern cinematic feel is unmistakable. They are highly conducive to the modern medium of film and television; a fact solidified by Showtime’s recent interest in American Dream Machine, and a quality that will prove to be invaluable, given the way that the story is favored so immensely by motion picture in this age. It is just another way that we at Benay are right in saying that our clients are, indeed, on top.

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If you’d like to learn more about Matthew Specktor and his novel, American Dream Machine, please visit the Tin House website by clicking here. You can find excerpts from the novel, information on Specktor’s other works, other Tin House authors, and more.

- Colleen McClintock

Tin House and Granta Set the Gender Bar for Publishers Nationwide

Could we be any more proud of our clients?  After seeing the official results from the March 4th VIDA count, probably not.  Benay clients Tin House and Granta were rated by VIDA as two of the most progressive publishers these days when it comes to gender equality.  Out of the fifteen that were reviewed by VIDA they and the Boston Review were the only ones to find that they were balanced between men and women in editors, reviewers, contributors, and otherwise.  The remaining twelve were shown to be starkly in favor of women.

The "Fantastic Women" issue of
Tin House, issued Fall 2007

“It isn’t rocket science” – the very words of Tin House Editor, Rob Spillman as quoted in a recent article on the pop culture blog, Flavorwire.  Spillman states, “…you would think others would move toward gender equality, or at least make a gesture toward it… for us the VIDA count was a spur, a call to action.”

How right he is.  The numbers of the VIDA count were dismal in many cases.  The New Yorker results showed roughly two and a half times as many men were employed in all categories; The New York Review of Books was even more imbalanced at around five times as many male contenders in all categories.

Not surprisingly, Tin House was singing somewhat of the same song not too long ago.  The difference is in the way they handled it.  The editorial team saw that even though they asked for an even split of writers to cover, people just kept writing more about male authors.  So what did they do?  They did what any truly proactive, progressive publisher would do – they got über deliberate.  Spillman and his team decided to section off a chunk of time every editorial meeting to re-evaluate the gender balance.  If it is off-kilter they fix it.  It’s as simple as that, no fuel cell chemical equation required.

Those over at Granta take an even simpler approach; they take gender out of the equation altogether.  For Editor John Freeman it is not a matter of the best female writers and the best male writers featured in his magazine, it is the best writers.  He seems to find that middle part erroneous.

“I don’t force myself to think of Louise Erdrich, or Karen Russell,” Freeman says in the Flavorwire article. “In fact, it is hard for me not to [think about them]; to me, they are simply the best out there.”

American Dream Machine author
Matthew Specktor with his daughter.

Now it is not as if this means that the writers at Tin House and Granta, respectively, are chosen out of gender equal merit.  Matthew Specktor’s novel American Dream Machine set to release from Tin House next month hardly holds any female characters at all.  It is a story, told from male protagonist Nate Rosenwald’s point of view, about his one-time successful talent agent father Beau Rosenwald.  Nate relates the story of his father’s personal reinvention as he starts up his own agency, the American Dream Machine, with friend and consequent business partner, William Farquarson.

It is a son-and-father tale to beat the best of them, and there is nothing wrong with that.  As a recent review of Specktor’s novel on bookbrowse.com says, this novel may be all about men but it is by no means only for men.  In the novel Nate narrates with a distinctly authorial voice, channeling Specktor himself when he says, “This story… isn't about some bored actress and her existential crises, a troubled screenwriter who comes to his senses and hightails it back to Illinois. It's not about the vacuous horror of the California dream. It's something that could've happened anywhere else in the world, but instead settled, inexplicably, here.”

Hearing the novel put in this light, it isn’t really surprising, then, that it’s coming out of Tin House.  It could happen to anyone - it is applicable to anyone, un-biased and free from pretense.

- Colleen McClintock

The Albert Pujols of Publishing

Every rookie strives, not to win the MVP trophy, but to be acknowledged as a real player on the field. Though independent press, Tin House Books, may be perceived as a rookie in the world of publishing, their award winning titles and authors have captivated readers worldwide for the better part of a decade. In fact, some of your favorite titles may unknowingly be a result of this phenomenal Portland based publisher.

Such was the case with avid reader and 2012 New York Times Notable Author, David Abrams. Unaware of the fact that he already had several Tin House titles on his bookshelf, Abrams encountered Tin House title, Glaciers at a local Barnes and Noble. After immediately falling in love with the intriguing opening line, Abrams could not help but to continue following the peculiar story of lead character, Isabel. The author of the acclaimed Iraq War novel, Fobbit, was pleasantly surprised to find Tin House was responsible for publishing the title. Moreover, upon re-examining some of his favorite reads, Abrams found that Tin House was the press behind a number of titles he intended to include on his Best Books of 2012 list. Abrams had come to the realization that Tin House Books, an independent press in Portland, Oregon, was no longer a rookie, but a true player with an undeniable presence in the field of publishing; one he regards to be the 2012 Publisher of the Year in his blog.

However, Abrams was not the only one who noticed the literary quality of Tin House’s titles. The New York Times has recently given praise to author, Christopher R. Beha's, title What Happened to Sophie Wilder. In which critic, D.G. Myers, is quoted saying the Tin House title contains 'what is perhaps the best conversion scene in an English-language novel since [Graham Greene's] 'The End of the Affair.' " With the continuous praise and recognition Tin House is receiving from top names in the literary industry, it is safe to say the publisher has solidified their spot on the field as a seasoned starter. 

Octopus in a Tin House

Independent publishing company and Benay client, Tin House Books, has recently announced an exciting new partnership with Octopus Books. The marriage has resulted in a co-published collaborative series of poetry books, the first of which will be released March 2013.  Though they both call the edgy city of Portland, Oregon home, the two visionary publishing companies share more than an area code. Both emphasized their concern for the lack of poetry books being published in the current market and see their new collaboration as a potential model for   other publishers that have shied away from the poetic genre.  

Matthew Dickman, poetry editor at Tin House magazine, and Zachary Schomburg, editor at Octopus Books have chosen Portuguese to be the first title released in the series. Authored by Brandon Shimoda, the pen responsible for O Bon (Litmus Press 2011), The Girl Without Arms (Black Ocean 2011), and The Alps (Flim Forum 2008), Portuguese brings together the collaborating publisher’s two distinct visions in a model that “meets at the edges” rather than in the middle.

The exciting new title will be in book stores on March 12, 2013, but it is currently available for pre-order on the Octopus Books site as well as Amazon. However, the two publishers won’t stop there. They have already agreed to collaboratively publish another work, Bianca Stone’s new collection, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, in 2014. Look forward to some great new literature from Tin House and Octopus Books in the years to come.

-Mike Iovino, Intern

This September from Tin House: Get “Hooked”

Fans of books like The Secret Diary of a Call Girl can look forward to next month’s release of Tin House’s Hooked by John Franc. It was mentioned in an article on Bookfinds.com on the current trend of stories about the scandalous, secretive world of brothels and call girls, seen everywhere from Jennifer Love Hewitt’s The Client List, a Lifetime movie now being made into a TV show, to the Showtime series based on the popular Secret Diary of a Call Girl, to books like Hooked. A Library Journal review says “Franc has created an interesting and provocative thought experiment . . . The questions the novel poses about men and relationships are as compelling as they are disturbing. Potentially great conversation fodder for book clubs; recommended for fans of the edgy read.” Hooked promises to offer an intriguing look at a taboo lifestyle.

Wire to Wire Book Reading with Scott Sparling

If you’re in the Portland area on June 30, Tin House Books invites you to a reading at Powell’s with Scott Sparling, the author of Wire to Wire. The Cleveland Plain Dealer calls this exciting new crime novel “electric . . . it crackles.” Publisher’s Weekly’s starred review says “Sparling's debut is well crafted and thrilling . . . hopping off this runaway train would never cross a reader's mind.” Here’s your chance to find out what everyone’s talking about, so don’t miss this great event!

Powell’s Reading with Scott Sparling
Thursday, June 30
7:30 pm
1005 W Burnside
Portland, OR 97209