SEMINARS AND PANELS 2009

Monday, July 13 2009

2 p.m. THE AGENT GAME

Panel with Denise Shannon, Bonnie Nadell, Julie Barer, and Betsy Lerner

Finding an agent to represent your work can be a time-consuming and hair-raising endeavor. Ideally, the relationship between agent and author is both professional and personal, providing a writer with much-needed support and encouragement. In this seminar, New York agents talk about what writers should know before seeking representation and offer unique insight into their profession.

3 p.m. OBSESSION, A NEW MUSK BY STEVE ALMOND

The Little Engine That Couldn't Stop

Clinicians tend to cast obsessive thoughts and behaviors as pathological, which is why clinicians are so fucking boring at parties. In this informal and possibly disorganized lecture, we'll examine a series of obsessive texts, from Lolita to Fever Pitch, in an effort to understand how our fixations might be made to yield urgent prose without descending into yammering solipsism. If time allows, the lecturer will recite key sequences from the film "Fatal Attraction."

Tuesday, July 14 2009

2 p.m. EDITING FROM ALL ANGLES

Panel with Keith Lee Morris, Jan Elizabeth Watson, Ted Thompson, Tony Perez, Meg Storey and Michelle Wildgen, moderated by Lee Montgomery

Tin House authors and editors talk about the often knotty process of editing, both by themselves and with others. We’ll talk about how a story or novel is shaped during initial revisions, and how just when you think you’re done, whammo, you get an editor who wags a big no-no finger in your face and gives you more stuff to do.

3 p.m. WRITING FROM EXPERIENCE, WITH STEPHEN ELLIOTT

The Freedom of Sticking to the Facts

Your experiences, and how you process them, are the most valuable things we can offer readers. We will talk about writing from experience in fiction and nonfiction, and how to use our lives as jumping off points and framing devices for the stories we tell about ourselves and others. We’ll also talk about the dangers of writing from experience and overcoming the blocks set in place (often unnecessarily) by our fears of exposure. We will look at strategies for getting past those fears and for dealing with friends and relatives whose memories might be different from our own. Finally, we will focus on unlocking our lives and the joy and value of integrating the worlds we know with the worlds we create.

INSIDE THE ACTOR'S STUDIO: METHOD POETICS, WITH D.A. POWELL

Getting Inside Another’s Head

Writing a poem is not unlike rehearsing a play: the voice of the poem must be arrived at through a series of apt choices, just as an actor's performance is built on apt choices. In this seminar, we'll look at the ways in which the character of the poem can be broadened and strengthened using tools traditionally associated with theatre.

Wednesday, July 15 2009

2 p.m. BEGINNINGS

A panel with Karen Shepard, Dorothy Allison, and Walter Kirn, moderated by Elissa Schappell

Wittgenstein once wrote, “It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.” This is true of writers at all levels of development. One thing that’s commonly said of an unfinished story is that it “didn’t even really start until page 5” or something like that. We’ll discuss how to tell a good beginning from a false start, and examine classic great beginnings to discover what a story demands at its outset.

3 p.m. SUSPENSE WITH ANTHONY DOERR

Shower-Murders, Information, and the Sword of Damocles.

Suspense is, literally, the temporary cessation of something. Have you ever wondered if disruptions sometimes enhance our enjoyment of pleasurable activities? Did you know an experiment has found that interruptions in massages actually heighten people's enjoyment of them? And another showed that TV commercials might actually intensify people's gratification during shows? Here the world's least accomplished suspense writer will try to ask some questions about suspense and how we reveal information to our readers.

Thursday, July 16 2009

2 p.m. HUNGERING FOR REALITY WITH DAVID SHIELDS

Relish ruminating on the real world

The lyric essay is the literary form that gives the writer the best opportunity for rigorous exploration of the world, because it offers no consoling dream-world, no exit door. It is the mind contemplating the “real” world. I want to take the banality of the essay form (the literalness of “facts,” “truth,” “reality”), turn it inside out, and make it a staging area for the inquiry into any claim of facts and truth—an extremely rich theater for investigating the most serious epistemological questions, starting and perhaps concluding with confusion as to where that very “truth” starts and stops.

3 p.m. FRUCTIFICATION WITH AIMEE BENDER

Nurturing the seeds and sprouts of language

This talk will cover sentences, paragraphs and short pieces that bear fruit—meaning they go through a process with a kind of blossoming at the end. We’ll discuss how this happens, or what we see happening. We will use fruit as a metaphor for as much as we possibly can. And as always, some kind of writing exercise will happen at some point.

Friday, July 17 2009

2 p.m. POINT OF VIEW WITH EHUD HAVAZELET

It matters most, no matter how you look at it

Grace Paley was asked once how she knew when she had a story. “When I have two stories,” was her answer. As writers we explore then bring to light this second story, and Point of View is perhaps our most powerful tool. In his lighthearted romp, Psycho, Hitchcock brilliantly maneuvers us into positions we neither anticipated or would willingly accede to, POV at its finest. All this and Janet Leigh.

3 p.m. EMOTIONAL INDIRECTION WITH JIM SHEPARD

Narrative sleight-of-hand

Through a close reading of Amy Hempel's "The Afterlife," we’ll examine the evocative possibilities in fiction of a protagonist's telling someone else's story as a way of also—or actually—telling his or her own.

Saturday, July 18 2009

2 p.m. THE SLICK SHORT STORY WITH CHARLES D’AMBROSIO

Always regard surface as but one aspect of depth

The hardest part of writing any story is the surface. This talk will explore the power of the slick surface in short fiction and attempt to celebrate superficiality in a way that feels substantial and offers a few practical tips along the way.

3 p.m. ENDINGS

A panel with Lan Samantha Chang, Ron Hansen, and Ann Hood

All seminars and panels will be held in Vollum Lecture Hall on Reed College Campus. Door charge to seminars is $15.

READINGS

Sunday, July 12th 2009

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Lan Samantha Chang, Kevin Young, Steve Almond

Monday, July 13th 2009

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Karen Shepard, Ann Hood, Walter Kirn

Tuesday, July 14th 2009

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Jan Elizabeth Watson, Stephen Elliott, Keith Lee Morris

Wednesday, July 15th 2009

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Anthony Doerr, David Shields, Charles D’Ambrosio

Thursday, July 16th 2009

7:30 p.m. Special Celebration for Tin House’s 10th Anniversary
To be held in Downtown Portland—We’ll be busing over at 7

Friday, July 17th 2009

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Bret Anthony Johnston, Ehud Havazelet, Ron Hansen

Saturday, July 18th 2009

8 p.m. Reading and signing with Aimee Bender, D.A. Powell, Jim Shepard

All readings to be held in Cerf Amphitheater on Reed College Campus
Door charge to readings is $5.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please call Cheston at 503-219-0622 or email cheston@tinhouse.com