Tin House Magazine, Volume 20, Issue 3, Spring 2019: #79 Spring Fling

Tin House #79

by Win McCormack (Editor), Rob Spillman (Editor), Holly MacArthur (Editor)

Cicero famously said, “Sweet is the memory of past troubles.” This bittersweet interplay that exists between remembered pain and joy is fertile ground for several of our authors. In “Flycatcher,” Aleksandar Hemon teases apart the subtle social navigations teenagers make, willingly or unwillingly, to distinguish themselves, and how these choices reverberate through time and memory. In Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s poem “Good Mother,” she writes, “We held on & praised the nameless thing / that makes us what we think we aren’t strong enough / to know.” The urge to stop time and with it a collective feeling, animates Maria Lioutaia’s story “Preservation,” in which Lenin’s preserved body begins to disintegrate and the mausoleum’s director turns to the living in order to suspend the inevitable.

As when you experience spring, when you read great writing you can feel as if there are powerful, unseen forces just below the surface. You can feel their pull, and you probably have a very strong sense of what they look and feel like. Sometimes it helps to have someone help you see and name them. Let our writers be your guide in this time of renewal and regeneration. Happy, or at least thought-provoking, spring.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

221 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 5, 2019

About the author

Win McCormack is an American publisher and editor from Oregon.

He is editor-in-chief of Tin House magazine and Tin House Books, the former publisher of Oregon Magazine, and founder and treasurer of MediAmerica, Inc. He serves on the board of directors of the journal New Perspectives Quarterly. His political and social writings have appeared in Oregon Humanities, Tin House, The Nation, The Oregonian, and Oregon Magazine. McCormack's investigative coverage of the Rajneeshee movement was awarded a William Allen White Commendation from the University of Kansas and the City and Regional Magazine Association. His latest book, You Don’t Know Me: A Citizen's Guide to Republican Family Values, examines the sex scandals of Republican politicians who espouse "moral values."

As a political activist, McCormack served as Chair of the Oregon Steering Committee for Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign. He is chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon's President's Council and a member of the Obama for President Oregon Finance Committee. McCormack was also chosen as Alternate Delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He currently serves on the Oregon Council for the Humanities and the Oregon Tourism Commission. Additionally, McCormack sits on the Board of Overseers for Emerson College, and is a co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Liberty Hill Foundation

Reviews

[Andy Kristensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best issue of this literary mag that I've read so far. All of the stories and essays, minus Hemon's weird little story, 'Flycatcher,' are superb. Xavier Navarro Aquino's story, 'Raw Season,' is about a Puerto Rican family dealing with the death of a relative right as Hurricane Maria is bearing down on the island, and it is one of the best stories I've read all year. I hope it gets considered for the Best American Short Stories collection for this year. Amy Lam's and Alia Volz's essays, one about Chinese symbol tattoos and the other about Volz's experience while almost getting raped in Cuba, are near pitch-perfect as well, both of them extremely well-written and absorbing. Great issue overall.